Settlers trespass on Palestinian land to build a pool for their children
Amer Abu Hijleh near the pool that settlers built on his land in the occupied West Bank
Ahmed Al-Bazz reports in +972:
Soon after the Palestinian Authority put the cities and towns of the occupied West Bank under COVID-19 lockdown in late March, Amer Abu Hijleh received a call from a fellow farmer telling him that Israeli settlers were working his land.
Abu Hijleh, 56, hung up and immediately left his home in the village of Deir Istiya, and drove toward his land, located in Area C of the West Bank next to the Israeli settlement of Yakir. Upon arrival, Abu Hijleh discovered that settlers had begun digging a hole in the ground after uprooting some shrubbery.
A few minutes later, Israeli forces and settlement security guards arrived at the scene and asked Abu Hijleh and a few Israeli activists who had come to support him to evacuate the area. “When I told [the security forces] that settlers had been working in my land, they didn’t stop them, and instead asked me to bring my documents [of land ownership] and contact the Israeli Civil Administration,” Abu Hijleh said, referring to the department of the Israeli Defense Ministry that administers the occupation in the West Bank.
Two weeks later, after collecting all the necessary documents showing he had inherited the plot from his father, Abu Hijleh returned to his land and found that the settlers had turned the hole in the ground into a pool. “Why are you angry? It’s just a pool for our children,” an Israeli settler reportedly told Abu Hijleh before representatives from the Civil Administration arrived and asked both the Palestinians and the settlers to evacuate “until the issue is legally resolved.”