VII. Nablus District

Yanun and Itamar

The Jewish settlement of Itamar and its six associated outposts sit along the top of a ridge five kilometers southeast of the Palestinian city of Nablus in the northern West Bank. Established in 1984 by the World Zionist Organization, Itamar’s presence grew significantly between 1996 and 1999 with the establishment of the outposts, the furthest of which (“Hill 777”) is located more than 5.5 kilometers from Itamar.[327] In 2007, these outposts covered 297 hectares, of which 136 hectares (46 percent) is privately owned Palestinian land, according to Peace Now.[328] An estimated 516 national-religious settlers lived in the outposts, and another 600 people live in Itamar proper.[329] On December 14, 2009, the Israeli cabinet approved adding Itamar to a list of “national priority” communities that would receive, on average, 1,000 shekels (US$260) per person per year in subsidies for education, employment and culture.[330] Other settlement subsidies, which amount to tens of thousands of dollars in grants, subsidies and tax abatements, are described above (“Settler Incentives and Funding Sources”).

Itamar and the outposts overlook and partly encircle the small, isolated Palestinian villages of Upper and Lower Yanun to the south, which are home to approximately 90 to 100 Palestinians from 16 families, according to residents. Upper Yanun is roughly two kilometers north of Lower Yanun, which it is connected to by a road. The lower village is several hundred years old.[331] The Yanun village council states that late 19th century Ottoman authorities granted lands in what is now the upper village to a number of Muslims from Bosnia and Herzegovina; by 1931, 20 people lived there.[332] An Upper Yanun resident told Human Rights Watch the Sadiq Agha family built the first house in Yanun in the 1920s, when they left Nablus after an earthquake.[333]

The residents of the village are primarily farmers. Upper Yanun has a small school, and Lower Yanun has a mosque and a “makeshift [health] clinic that opens once every two weeks in a residential building,” but there are no stores, and the village depends for supplies on the town of Aqraba, three kilometers to the south.[334]

Settlers from nearby outposts have violently attacked Yanun residents over the past 14 years, according to UN and NGO reports, Israeli and Palestinian media, and local residents.

“The trouble started here in 1996,” Upper Yanun resident Fawzi Yusef told Human Rights Watch, as settlers began to harass the villagers by physically attacking them, confiscating livestock, and destroying olive trees.[335] In 1998, Yusef said, settlers cut down thousands of the village’s olive trees; another attack that year killed 128 goats.[336] A document prepared by the Yanun village council lists 21 serious settler attacks from 1997 to 2004, including one fatal attack, several shootings, beatings, attacks on livestock, and the destruction by arson of the village’s only source of electricity, a UN-donated generator.[337] Settlers from the nearby outpost called G’vat Olam allegedly caused the most damage.[338] After the beginning of the second Palestinian intifada in 2000, Israeli settlers were also subjected to violent attacks, including shootings in particular. A settler website states that Palestinians killed 15 settlers from 2000 to 2007 “either in or on the road to Itamar” (including some who were not residents of Itamar).[339]

On October 18, 2002, severe settler violence and harassment led the entire population of Upper Yanun to flee, with the exception of two brothers and their families.[340] The New York Times reported that a settler spokesperson justified shooting Palestinians to force them to keep their distance from the settlements around Itamar because 11 settlers had been killed, but that settlers also repeatedly raided the town itself, entering homes, threatening residents, and destroying property. “One of my sons would cry and hold me in fear, and I had to get up with him at night and take his hand just to go to the bathroom,” resident Kamal Sbeih, a father of six, told the Times. “No one can accept living like this.”[341] Village council chairman Abdel Latif Sobeih told The Guardian:

They would shoot at us, at our sheep, our cattle. Then they started coming to the outskirts of the village and throwing rocks at the doors. After the beginning of the Intifada in 2000, it got much worse. I have been beaten up in my house in front of my family, in the courtyard and out in the fields.[342]

Israeli activists began accompanying villagers on return trips to their homes on October 20, until international monitors established a permanent presence in Upper Yanun; since June 2003, a home in Upper Yanun has been staffed by the Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI), a Christian NGO that places international volunteers in Palestinian areas at risk of settler attack. Over the following months and years, the families who had evacuated gradually returned to Upper Yanun. In 2007, settlers allegedly killed Mhamad Hamdan Beni Jabir as he tried to recover sheep that settlers had confiscated earlier in the day.[343] In 2006, Israeli authorities prosecuted five settlers for attacks on Palestinians the previous year; four were acquitted, including one who was placed under house arrest during trial (which he violated without suffering any punishment, while the fifth had previously pled guilty in exchange for an early release from detention.[344] The Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din, which tracks a number of criminal inquiries (not an exhaustive list of all cases) arising from alleged violence by settlers from Itamar and its outposts, has identified numerous failures to ensure accountability for settlers who attacked Palestinians or their property in or around Yanun.[345]

The UN and Israeli human rights organizations such as B’Tselem and Yesh Din have documented scores of settler attacks against Palestinians and their property, notably since 2003 as part of a so-called “price tag” strategy whereby settlers attack Palestinians and Israeli security forces as a diversionary and deterrent response to Israeli attempts to evacuate settlement outposts; a UN report from 2009 called settler violence “a key factor undermining the security and livelihoods of Palestinians throughout the West Bank.”[346] According to Yesh Din, the Israeli police force responsible for investigating criminal acts by settlers in the West Bank (the Samaria and Judea District Police) closes more than 90 percent of Palestinian complaints against settlers without filing charges, usually due to “lack of evidence” or “unknown perpetrator.”[347]

Israeli military orders prohibit villagers in Upper Yanun from constructing or renovating buildings, on the grounds that the village lacks an approved residential plan, a freeze that has forced some families to leave the area. An outstanding demolition order is also pending against a paved road leading to the village. No such military orders affect Itamar and the outposts, where construction continues, notwithstanding Israel’s partial, 10-month building freeze (which it declared in December 2009). Physical assault or the threat of assault by settlers, as well as Israeli military orders restricting Palestinian access to land and land use in nearby areas, prevent Palestinian villagers from grazing their sheep and accessing hundreds of dunams of their agricultural lands (these restrictions are in addition to the lands that the settlements confiscated, which are completely barred to Yanun residents). The areas confiscated for settlements include several large farm buildings for commercial animal production as well as areas for grazing sheep. Israeli settlers continue to graze their sheep on land belonging to Yanun residents without their permission, but without any action by Israeli authorities to prevent them and allow access for the landowners.

Life is very different in Itamar. The website of the Amana Settlement Movement, an Israeli pro-settler organization established in 1978, states that the “100 families” living in the settlement enjoy a number of services and amenities, including four synagogues, a grocery store, a health clinic, a daycare, two kindergartens, two elementary schools (for around 80 boys and 70 girls, respectively), a high school, and a yeshiva for student boarders “from all over Israel.”[348] According to the website,

Extracurricular and cultural activities in Itamar include carpentry, art, ceramics, music and animal husbandry for children and choir, drama and art for adults. There is also a basketball court and soccer field, a library, Beit Midrash for women and kollel for men [places of religious study]. A swimming pool with separate hours for men and women is located in nearby Elon Moreh.

Settlers told Human Rights Watch that most of the men work in the settlement in agriculture, education, or as yeshiva (seminary) students.[349] The settlement is a 50-minute drive from Jerusalem and is serviced by public buses every 90 minutes.[350]According to a settler who was a security officer for Itamar, the security situation in Itamar was currently “quiet,” thanks to an electric fence, a camera, 24/7 army patrol and private security patrol. “No Arab comes in,” he said.

Construction of new buildings continues in Itamar and its outposts, with homes being built on speculation and then sold. According an update from March 26, 2010, on the “Friends of Itamar” website, “This coming Wednesday … Itamar is dedicating its new neighborhood of 14 houses. With the blessing of Hashem [God] upon us all the houses have been sold already!”[351] Human Rights Watch observed a new neighborhood in Itamar of 10 new homes and 9 others that were almost completed; the attractive limestone-clad homes were roughly 100 meters square and had two bedrooms. According to one settler, new houses cost around NIS 538,000 (US$141,580) to buy or between NIS 1200 and 1600 a month (US$316 to US$421) to rent, excluding settlement taxes of NIS 200 to 300 (US$53 to US$79) and other costs. Human Rights Watch observed 12 poured-concrete bases for new home construction. “We rushed to get all the bases in before the [settlement construction] freeze hit, so that we could build,” the security officer said, referring to the 10-month partial moratorium the Israeli government on new home construction in settlements (excluding East Jerusalem) in November 2009 as an incentive to Palestinian peace negotiators.[352]

In contrast, Israeli restrictions prevent the residents of Upper Yanun from building any new homes, schools or animal pens or from improving existing structures, on the grounds that the entire village falls within “Area C,” which is under complete Israeli civil and military control and lacks an approved plan.[353] International humanitarian organizations have resorted to sponsoring projects in the village that do not require Israeli building permits—such as erecting temporary tents or renovating the insides of existing structures—which have proved impossible to obtain.[354] One Upper Yanun resident, Abu Hanni, has seven sons, but none have been able to build homes in Upper Yanun. “The married sons had to move to [the village of] Aqraba,” according to Rashed Murar.[355] “One of Abu Hanni’s sons tried to build a house here but it was demolished during the second intifada, just when it was ready to be inhabited.”

Fawzi Yusef, the principal of the only school in Upper Yanun, told Human Rights Watch that he was unable to renovate the school because he was afraid Israeli authorities would issue a demolition order against it. The village was losing residents, he said, because Israeli restrictions prevented young families from building homes there.

There are only nine students in school this year, when there used to be 21 or 22 kids here who were six or seven-years-old and 30 students above the sixth grade. They all go to Aqraba now; they take a bus twice a day. Internationals donated the bus in 2005. Before that, we had problems with settlers attacking the kids on the way to school.[356]

Fawzi’s brother, Mousa, interviewed separately, told Human Rights Watch that Israeli restrictions had prevented him from improving his home and building adequate pens for his sheep and chickens. He wanted to build a stairway to the upper floor of his home, which was built in 1985, “but the Israelis said they’d tear down the entire building if we did it.”[357] Israeli building restrictions had also thwarted efforts by the ICRC to help him improve his animal pens, Mousa said.

The ICRC is trying to coordinate [with the IDF] to put a roof over my sheep pen, but I’ve been waiting more than a year for the coordination. There’s a problem when it rains. I lost 25 head of sheep this year; they got sick from the cold and the mud, especially some of the young ones, who died just after they were born.

Mousa pointed out a large tarpaulin tent to Human Rights Watch that he had built out of materials donated by the ICRC and used as a shelter for his chickens. He explained that the IDF allowed the tent to stand because they did not consider it a permanent building. “There’s no cement in the ground for the base of the tent posts, so they don’t consider it a structure. But it is “useless” in winter to protect the chickens against the cold and rain, he said. Mousa told Human Rights Watch that raising sheep and chickens was his only source of income. “I have a daughter in university in Nablus, but I can barely afford her tuition,” he said.[358]

After the villagers fled in 2002, a donation from the Belgian Rural Electrification Project provided enough funding to replace the electricity generator that settlers had destroyed with electricity pylons and wires connecting the village to the electrical grid. While installing the pylons, the village also paved the only access road to upper Yanun. In 2006, Israeli authorities issued final demolition orders against the pylons and the asphalt road surface, on grounds that they lacked building permits, ordering Yanun residents to remove them within 14 days, notwithstanding the fact that the road conformed to applicable planning laws and that regional plans applicable to Yanun are of a type “permitting the most extensive building possibilities and where the least restrictions apply.”[359] Under Belgian government pressure, Israel did not carry out the demolitions, but the orders remain in force and can be executed at any time.[360]

Itamar is connected to the Israeli water network and receives water-infrastructure support from a non-profit organization registered in the US.[361] Yanun is not connected to the water network; a pump provides drinking water from a small spring, but this is inadequate for residents’ needs in summer, when they must transport water in trucks.[362] Residents and EAPPI volunteers told Human Rights Watch that settlers had repeatedly come to bathe in the spring that is Upper Yanun’s sole water source. On April 17, 2010, according to EAPPI volunteers, 19 settlers (all men), two of whom were armed, refused villagers’ requests and swam in the well, while verbally insulting residents and the volunteers. Some settlers returned an hour later, but three Israeli army vehicles arrived at the same time, apparently as a result of the phone calls made by the head of the village council to the Palestinian District Coordination Officer (responsible for coordination with the Israeli military), the UN and the Israeli Rabbis for Human Rights group.

They didn’t seem too interested in our version of events and when we showed them where six of the young men had climbed down to swim in the well, the comment of the officer in charge was “Brave Kids.” However their presence deterred the young settlers from returning.[363]

 

Large animal barns belonging to the settlements are visible from Yanun. According to a settler website, “The early settlers [in Itamar] focused on organic farming. That has mushroomed into the famous organic farms of Itamar and much success in the organic produce industry….”[364] The outpost known as “Gvaot Olam” raises hundreds of goats, according to another website, and settlers raise herds of sheep.[365]

Yanun residents told Human Rights Watch that IDF-imposed movement restrictions and the settlers’ confiscation of their lands had sharply cut down the number of livestock they were previously able to raise. According to Fawzi Yusef,

Before 1997, my family used to have 400 sheep and 60 cows. Now we have 30 sheep and no cows. We used to rent grazing and pasture land from Palestinian owners, but the settlers have taken over that land. Now to supplement the grazing, we have to buy food for the livestock, but to maintain even the number of sheep we have now is expensive. Meanwhile the settlers graze their sheep on our lands. It means that even the land we have left to us is sometimes too barren to support our animals. It happens all the time. Just an hour ago there was a large herd of settler sheep eating the grass under Yanun’s trees.

Although the IDF has failed to prevent settlers from repeatedly grazing their sheep on Yanun village land, it has prevented villagers from accessing roughly 300 dunams (30 hectares) of their olive trees and sheep pastures near the Itamar settlement and its outposts, and argued that the “military closure” of this area was required to protect settlers from Palestinian attacks as well as to protect Palestinians from settler attacks—even as, villagers said, the IDF’s response to their complaints was inadequate and failed to protect them from repeated incursions by settlers, who grazed their livestock on Yanun villagers’ land. In 2006, the Israeli High Court of Justice held that except for concrete cases whereby real time intelligence is obtained of threats on the ground, the IDF military commander should refrain from closing areas in a way that prevents Palestinians from reaching their lands, although it found that such closures could be “proportional” and justified under Israeli law if they were necessary for the protection of Israeli settlers.[366] (The court did not distinguish between Itamar, a settlement authorized under Israeli law, and its outposts, which are illegal under Israeli law). On the basis of that ruling, the IDF began to “coordinate” with the villagers to allow them access to their lands near the settlements. Villagers told Human Rights Watch in November 2009 that the IDF “coordinates” with them to enable them to access to their lands only a few days every year, and that it was impossible to cultivate their olive trees during this short period of time.

Israel’s prevention of Palestinian residents from accessing their lands, whose ownership it does not dispute, on the basis that every Palestinian is a security risk, such that any Palestinian presence in the vicinity of a settlement is a threat that they may act to prevent, is an unjustifiably disproportionate and overbroad interference in their freedom of movement and right to use their own property. It also discriminatory, as the exclusion from land applies to Palestinians only, and prohibits them freedom of movement specifically due to their ethnicity, without justification for such an approach.

 Fawzi Yusef described the drawbacks of the coordination policy to Human Rights Watch:

We are required to coordinate with the IDF before we can go to the part of our lands that the settlers have taken control of, around 500 dunams (50 hectares). We coordinate through the Israeli DCO [district coordination officer] to go there. This year the IDF gave us one day for the olive harvest and two days to prune the trees and to do everything else needed to tend them during the whole year. But you need two months to dig around, fertilize, prune, and take away the cut branches, plus enough time for the harvest. In Lower Yanun, where the settlers aren’t as close and you don’t need accompaniment, they started harvesting on October 1 and they’re still harvesting today [November 8]. Coordination gives you enough time to say hello to the tree, that’s it, then you have to leave. [367]

According to Rashed Murar, a normal harvest from the 300 dunams of olive trees used to yield 1600 kilograms of oil. “This year we got 10 kilograms of olives and 2 kilograms of oil, because for years now we haven’t been able to tend the trees properly or to harvest the olives when they are ready. We must just harvest quickly from trees we can’t cultivate.”[368] Yusef said that because of villagers’ inadequate access to the lands for which IDF coordination was needed, the settlers’ destruction of thousands of trees, and the confiscation of lands for the settlement and its outposts, “now we’re surrounded by thousands of trees but we have to buy olive oil for our own use here, where we used to sell it. All the other trees we used to cultivate are gone. We used to have almonds and figs here, even grapes.”[369]

Murar told Human Rights Watch that IDF soldiers cooperated with settlers to prevent Yanun residents from gaining access to their lands:

Earlier this year [2009] we were told we had IDF coordination, so my brother and I went up to the olive trees. Then an army Hummer came, and the army told us not to go beyond a certain limit, even though part of our lands lay beyond it. The soldiers agreed with the settlers. Finally the Israeli DCO [district coordination officer] came from Huwwara [a nearby military base] and told us to ignore the settlers, but then when some international monitors were trying to accompany us to make sure things went right, the army declared the area a closed military zone, and prevented any internationals from coming.