Rantis town is located to the northwest of Ramallah and enjoys a wealth of natural resources which made it a prey for the Israeli occupation and its continuous plundering.
For years the occupation has continued the daily work of extracting oil and gas from the Majd 5 field which is established on the town’s lands. The Palestinian residents live in unstoppable suffering as a result of the occupation’s policies and aggressions.
Shaker Abu Salim Chairman of the Rantis Council confirms that the town has a big wealth that the occupation benefit from while the Palestinians its rightful owners are prevented from exploiting it.
Abu Salim indicated in press statements that the town is located on huge fields of oil and natural gas.
The appropriation of Rantis’s land began many years ago before the discovery of the oil fields through erecting the separation wall which seized large parts of the land.
Abu Salim stated that the village’s actual land area was estimated at 37000 dunums before the occupation government confiscated 27000 dunums for the Apartheid Wall and the oil and gas exploration fields.
Rantis’s land is divided by the Armistice line which isolated more than two-thirds of the village’s lands in 1948. The residents have less than a third of their property in the 1967 occupied lands and Israel continues to confiscate more lands until the present day.
Huge quantities
Abu Salim said that reports estimate that there are 2.5 billion barrels of oil and a huge amount of gas under the village’s lands. The Israeli occupation authorities block the Palestinians from investing or carrying out any activity or exploration in these lands.
Regarding the date of the beginning of the exploration work Abu Salim said “About 20 years ago the occupation began with a geological survey. Then in 2009 the first well was drilled followed by the construction of the first platform and tower for oil and gas extraction in 2012.”
The land had been cultivated with wheat for years before the occupation took full control over it according to Abu Salim.
New drilling machines
The inhabitants recently monitored the installation of a new rig barracks new rooms 24-hour movement continuous work and too many cars transporting workers around the clock.
The head of the village council said “The occupation took advantage of the agreements signed with the PLO starting with the Oslo Agreement and then the Paris Agreement which deprives the Palestinian Authority of exploring any wealth in the Palestinian lands without the approval of the occupation.”
Abu Salim believes that the normalization agreements with the occupation generate a feeling of disappointment and despair about any possible solution regarding the stolen lands the plundered wealth and the possibility of returning the right to its people.
Annexation
Rantis is one of the Palestinian towns under threat of Israeli annexation.
The senior citizen of Rantis Haji Amara Wahdan (Abu Saleh) confirms that in 1948 the village lost its source of livelihood in the plains in particular and Palestinians only had mountain land and a few fields. The people were forced to search for their livelihood and many headed to Jordan then in the sixties and seventies they left to the Arab Gulf states. “Only 500 of its residents remained after they were more than two thousand people before the Nakba” he underlined.
Abu Saleh who drew a map of the town in his youth says “I was heartbroken at the condition of my village. I knew its borders to the Palestinian coast. I drew it (the map) so that young people become aware of the rich fertile land of their country even if they were deprived of it.”
He was one of the residents of Rantis who defended it and the surrounding villages in the Nakba and he fought alongside the well-known Palestinian leader Hassan Salama who died of his wounds in the Ras al-Ain battle in May 1948.
The townspeople continue to insist on remaining steadfast on their land despite the Israeli occupation’s destruction displacement and annexation plans. They stress that they will not give up their land whatever the sacrifices and that right will eventually be returned to its owners.
