Israeli forces Wednesday morning demolished an agricultural wall in Ni‘lin town, west of Ramallah city, according to sources.
Mayor of Ni‘lin Emad al-Khawaja told WAFA that a unit of Israeli forces raided the town and tore down a wall surrounding a one-donum plot of agricultural land belonging to Hussein al-Khawaja in the early morning hours.
The landowner explained the Israeli authorities ordered him a month ago to halt the construction of the wall purportedly for being close to the section of Israel’s apartheid wall, built on land seized from the town, without allowing him sufficient time to appeal the decision in Israeli courts.
Located 18 kilometers to the northwest of Ramallah city, Ni‘lin has a population of some 5,900 and occupies a total area of 15,228 dunams. Since the start of the Israeli occupation in June 1967, like so many other villages in Palestine, Ni‘lin has been subjected to almost continual land theft for Israeli colonial settlements, bypass roads, and military installations.
Under the Oslo Accords, an agreement made 25 years ago that was supposed to last just five years towards a self-governing country alongside Israel, the villagers were allowed to build in only 750 dunams, accounting for 5 percent of their land.
The Palestinian Authority was given limited control over a small pocket of land occupying 1,123 dunams, including the built-up area, accounting for almost 7 percent of the village’s total area. In contrast, Israel maintains control over the remainder, classified as Area C.
Israel has constructed a section of the apartheid wall, confiscating and isolating some 5,600 dunams of fertile land for colonial settlement activities and pushing the villagers into a crowded enclave, a ghetto, surrounded by walls, settlements and military installations.
Israel has established three colonial settlements, namely Hashmona’im, Mattityahu and Modi’in Illit on 2,340 dunams of lands confiscated from the village.
The “Civil Administration” is the name Israel gives to the body administering its military occupation of the West Bank.
Soldiers in the oxymoronically named Civil Administration determine where Palestinians may live, where and when they may travel (including to other parts of the occupied territories like Gaza and East Jerusalem), whether they can build or expand homes on their own land, whether they own that land at all, whether an Israeli settler can takeover that land among others.
