‘Bypass roads’ – How Israel seizes land, isolates Palestinian towns
Israeli roadblock in the occupied West Bank
Fayha Shalash reports in The Palestine Chronicle on 12 November 2024:
Ra’fat Dumaidi can no longer access the land he inherited from his father and grandparents in his town of Huwwara, south of Nablus. Dumaidi’s land, along with hundreds of other dunams of the village’s lands, was confiscated by Israeli occupation forces to make way for a new settlement road that serves several settlements near Nablus.
‘They Stole My Land and Trees’
When work began on the settlement road adjacent to Huwwara in 2020, Israel issued an order to confiscate hundreds of dunams of the town’s lands, including Dumaidi’s.
The man attempted to challenge the Israeli order, but Israeli soldiers expelled him and warned him never to set foot on the land again. While there, Dumaidi noticed that all his olive trees had been uprooted and discarded. When he tried to gather them for harvesting, soldiers attacked him. “They stole my land and my trees. All the beautiful lands in the Huwwara Plain were bulldozed and we were banned from accessing them,” he told the Palestine Chronicle.
Worse yet, Palestinians were also denied access to lands surrounding the new road.
The Israeli occupation army additionally confiscated tractors from farmers who own land in the Huwwara Plain to prevent them from reaching their fields.
After opening the road, the Israeli army installed an iron gate at Huwwara’s entrance, which Israeli soldiers close at will, creating long waits and restricting Palestinian movement.
“Our town was a thriving commercial center, full of vehicles and pedestrians. Now it is empty and isolated, as Palestinians are forced to take alternative routes from neighboring villages due to Huwwara’s closure with the iron gate,” Dumaidi added. Dumaidi also owns two shops in Huwwara, but he is now incurring huge losses due to the current restrictions.
To make matters worse, despite the new settlement road, illegal Jewish settlers continue to pass through the town, threatening Palestinians with weapons and vandalizing their properties.