Farmers forced at gunpoint from olive groves near the Apartheid Wall
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Farmers forced at gunpoint from olive groves near the Apartheid Wall

***image1***Occupation forces today forced farmers from Zububa village to abandon their work in olive groves near the Apartheid Wall.

As the farmers tended their olive trees at a distance of around fifty meters from the Wall, a unit of Occupation forces surrounded them and ordered them to stop work, claiming that they posed a security threat to the Apartheid Wall. The farmers refused to obey the soldiers’ orders, and were forced to leave at gunpoint.

The land belongs to Emad Aref Jaradat, who owns seventeen dunums of land, thirteen of which are isolated behind the Wall. Today’s attack means that he is now banned from working on the remaining four dunums. The Occupation authorities are also now refusing all requests made by farmers for permits to enter their lands isolated behind the Wall.

Zububa village, which lies to the northwest of Jenin city, lost around 13,000 dunums during the Nakba of 1948, which saw mass confiscation of Palestinian land by the Occupation. Another 1000 dunum were confiscated in 1951.

Since then, a series of measures imposed by the Occupation have slashed the amount of land that the villagers can farm still further. With the building of the Apartheid Wall, 28 dunums were taken, and another 25 for for the building of Salim checkpoint. All that is left for the village is 700 dunums. The major part of the area is taken up with housing, leaving only a tiny area for the agriculture on which village depends.

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