On Friday, the popular committee of the villages affected by the Homesh settlement went to celebrate the almost complete retreat of the settlers. Hundreds of people gathered after prayer at the mosque of Burqa and marched together to the Homesh settlement. ***image2***Just in front of the settlement, they started planting trees and reclaiming their land in celebration of the successful efforts to force settlers to abandon their plans to re-populate the settlement. Last week, the settlers took all their belongings and left the area, and have not returned since. Only a few settlers were present but immediately left the area as the Palestiinan protest was approaching.
Homesh settlers were forced to hand over the settlement to the Israeli military during Sharon’s “disengagement”. Since then, “Homesh First,” a group of settlers, has made the settling of these lands a symbol of Israeli refusal to leave any dunum of land to the Palestinian people. Demonstrators from the villages on whose lands the settlement is built – Burqa, Bizzariya, Silat ad-Dhahr, Sabastiya and Beit Imrin – came together to protest this re-population, and now that the settlers are in retreat, they will make sure to take their land back.