The local committees of the Palestinian Grassroots Anti Apartheid Wall Campaign in Qalqiliya district (Falamya, Jayyous and Kufr Jamal), today released a call for Palestinians to take action against the Occupation on Saturday 9 August in protest at the Occupationâs continuing attacks on Palestinian farmers:
- The Occupation forces continue their oppression and brutal procedures against our farmers in the cities and villages of Palestine, putting ever more obstacles in front of them and tightening the procedures that block them from reaching their lands isolated behind the Apartheid Wall.
The aim is to depress the farmers financially and psychologically by giving them the minimum opportunity to reach their land to farm it, so that they will be driven from their lands to make way for the colonial Zionist Occupation
Since the start of construction of the Apartheid Wall, Occupation bulldozers have uprooted and destroyed thousands of dunum of farmed land, cutting down thousands of fruit trees and demolishing greenhouses. Thousands more dunum have been isolated behind the Wall, causing further losses.
The Occupation claimed that they would allow farmers to reach their lands using a simple system of military gates and permits. However these gates and permits have been used systematically to expel the farmers from their lands and minimise their existence on it. In addition to the humiliation and daily harassment that farmers suffer at the gates, the Occupation enforces a complex system under which the issue of permits is conditional on âsecurity issuesâ, and under which a very limited number of land owners are allowed permits. No-one is exempt from this procedure, even old men and women.
Since the imposition of this system, the number of people receiving permits has been decreasing. Even people who previously received permits are now refused new ones. In Jayyous village, for example, thirty-four farmers are being refused permits for âsecurity reasonsâ and hundreds of others have been denied for other reasons. The Occupationâs actions are part of the Zionist colonization policy that intends to destroy the structure of Palestinian agricultural society. They are putting their hands on the Palestinian lands in order to colonize them and to destroy the demographic balance for the benefit of the settlers. The Occupation is imposing the Ottoman laws, under which if the land is not farmed continuously for three years, it will automatically become the property of the state: seized for Israel.
For these reasons we, the local committees of the Palestinian Grassroots Anti Apartheid Wall Campaign in Qalqiliya district (Falamya, Jayyous and Kufr Jamal) condemn these procedures against us and against out fathersâ and grandfathersâ lands, and call for a march to Falamia gate (gate number 927) on Saturday 9 August at 10 oâclock. There we will stage a sit-in until the Occupation stops its racist and discriminatory procedures.
NOTES TO EDITORS
- 1. Since the start of construction of the Apartheid Wall in 2002, farmers cut off from their lands by the wall have only been able to access their land by showing a permit issued by the Occupation authorities.
2. The Occupation has been steadily decreasing the number of permits issued, often invoking unspecified âsecurity reasonsâ, and additionally by gradually narrowing the criteria for farmers deemed to qualify for a permit. Because the restrictions seem to have been imposed in an arbitrary way, it is difficult to identify a timeline for the narrowing of restrictions.
3. Farmers report that initially permits were given to the majority farmers, and the additional workers employed by the farmers. After a time, this was narrowed so that only the family of the land owner were given permits; then, only the sons of the landowner; finally, only the landowner and his eldest son.
4. Further, restrictions have been placed numbers of animals and tools that farmers are allowed to bring onto the land.
5. As a result of these restrictions it has become almost impossible for farmers to work on the land in many places affected by the Wall.