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IWPS Team working with other activists against the brutal occupation of Palestine…

The Last Family in Izbat Abu Adam

“My heart is aching,” said SA to the IWPS team this afternoon (10/12/11), looking out over land that had been in his family for generations, until it was seized by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF). Their home is overlooked by the settlement of Burqan, as well as the Burqan and Ariel industrial zones. SA, along with his children and wife, are the lone remaining occupants of the village of Izbat Abu Adam.

Although the family have faced a sustained campaign of land seizure, denial of rights, harassment and mistreatment by the IOF and Israeli settlers for many years, they have consistently refused to leave their ancestral land. SA showed the team a spacious cave dating from Roman times, now used to house chickens, which is situated beneath the family home. Before the house was built, SA’s father and family lived in this cave, and SA himself was born in it.

The IWPS team were then shown the surrounding land, which the IOF took from the family, and other local families without warning or offer of compensation. The hills were bulldozed of their olive trees – of their original 600, only around 250 of their family trees now remain. The appropriated land was used to build the Israeli Burqan and Ariel industrial zones, which now manufacture a variety of products, including plastics, metals and textiles, reportedly creating vast chemical and environmental damage to the land and water supplies of the area.
The little remaining wheat grown by the family that survives the chemicals and destruction by wild boar – allegedly introduced by settlers to the area – is also under threat by sewage pumped there from settlements and the industrial zones. This is a health hazard and we were also told that the smell nearby the sewage filled areas is sickening. SA also pointed out a rubbish dump under the Burqan industrial zone and visible from his house, for which 3 dunums (one dunum = 1000m squared) of his land was taken. Rubbish from settlements all around the area is dumped here, adding insult to injury for the family.

Running directly through the middle of their land is a motorway, built in 1998 so that settlers could have easy access to Israel. 10 dunums of the family’s land was taken for this, but SA told us that the issues the road causes are even greater than just a reduction in their land ownership – rather than being able to travel directly to his land across the motorway, which is easily visible at less than half a kilometre away, he must travel 15 kilometres to get there. The IWPS team experienced firsthand what day-to-day travel is like for the family on our journey to the house, and saw that they are forced to travel on dangerously steep, rocky mud roads, which cause great difficulty for cars. SA joked “it would be quicker for me to travel to America than it would for me to get to my land.”

Another of the family’s problems is that all of their land is designated as “Zone C” meaning that it is entirely under Israeli control. Permission is rarely granted for Palestinians to increase the size of their homes, which is necessary as their children marry and start their own families. (Conversely Israel consistently encourages Zionists from all over the world to come and build new homes in the surrounding settlements– yet another example of the second-class citizenship of the Palestinian people.) In 1998, SA built an extension on the family’s home, to accommodate its increasing size. The IOF immediately issued a demolition order. SA told us how he dismantled the house himself, knowing that if the army were to do it, they would consequently provide him with a bill for their “services”. The remaining family now live in three rooms, two of which were the original structure and one of which SA built from wood, which makes it a temporary structure and therefore permissible. There are 250 people in his extended family, all of whom ideally in Palestinian culture would live very closely together. This is impossible for the family.

As well as all of this, they have faced discrimination and harassment from Israeli settlers. They told IWPS that shots have been fired at them from the road, that a donkey was taken and that olives from their remaining trees had been picked and stolen by Israelis from nearby settlements. SA’s wish for the future was “peace for all and to be able to live in safety with my family.”

SA’s wife, noticeably upset by talking about her family’s situation, left us with the words: “the life of every Palestinian is full of pain.”

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