Active and energetic despite his age Mahfoudh Bozayya wakes up early in the early morning to perform dawn prayer and loads his donkey before heading to his land in Wad al-Bir in Salfit in the West Bank. The Israeli Ariel settlement was established on nearby Palestinian land.
Ariel settlement keeps creeping slowly into Bozayya’s land grabbing whatever in its way of agricultural and pastoral lands and trees. However Bozayya who is from Kifl Haris village in Salfit province resists this settlement expansion by his keenness on preserving his land and taking care of it.
Bozayya told the PIC reporter that 27 years ago an Israeli settler came to a group of Palestinian farmers including Bozayya who are from Kifl Haris and Farkha towns and Salfit city and ordered them to leave their lands under the pretext that they belong to him but they refused. After a while the Israeli army and a number of settlers started excavating around the lands to build new roads.
Ongoing pressures
Bozayya said “I didn’t care about settlers or the settlement expansion. I just kept taking care of my land and my olive trees which are like children for me. There is no force in the world that can rob me of my land and kick me out of it.”
He rides his donkey for many kilometers to water his olive trees especially in summer. These days he sprays the weeds with pesticides and trims the trees to protect them from agricultural pests and diseases.
On the pressures imposed by the Israeli occupation forces on Palestinian farmers in the area Bozayya complained that the IOF even prevents them from digging a water well claiming that the lands there are classified as Area C. He also pointed to the harassments they are exposed to as a result of the settlement expansion. “I will stay in my land and will never leave it. Death happens only once. Let it be with dignity” he stressed.
Bozayya pointed to the lack of the support provided to farmers working in an area that is subjected to confiscation and settlement expansion adding that farmers have simple demands like providing tractors or olive seedlings.
The industrial area expansion
Bozayya pointed out that in every olive season he produces about 80 cans of pure olive oil which he depends on as a source of livelihood to educate his children and face hardships and high prices.
According to researcher in Israeli settlement affairs Khaled Maali Wad al-Bir is a focus of attention for the settlers in Ariel settlement and they consider it an extension of their settlement and its industrial area. They have even started excavation works in it to establish new infrastructure for the settlement’s industrial area.
Maali said that from time to time the industrial area to the west of Salfit expands and new factories are built. He added that the Israeli occupation authorities have started bulldozing Palestinian lands and uprooting olive trees in the nearby Bruqin village in a prelude to establish new infrastructure for the industrial area.
