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A meeting took place on 29 April in the Halhul municipality hall, between around 20 citizens and farmers from Haulhul and Beit Ummar villages. The main issue of the meeting was about what actions to take to counter the ongoing expansion of the settlement called Karmei Tzur.

The two villages are facing many problems from the settlers living there. Since the creation of the outpost 20 years ago, directly between the two villages, the expansion of the settlement has stolen much of the villages' land.

During the most recent period, however, the settlers have begun to steal land from the farmers in order to expand the settlement by building ever more expansive fences, without any kind of confiscation order from the Israeli Civil Administration. The situation became more difficult when the settlers began to prevent the farmers from working their land, not only inside the illegal fence, but also outside it.

The role of the Israeli Civil Administration is ambiguous. While they often stated to the farmers that they could go and work their land freely, in reality, they did nothing to prevent the settlers from violently attacking the farmers in order to prevent them from accessing their own land.

The situation is quite ridiculous, because in front of the farmers, the officers of the Civil Administration often give assurances about the absolute illegality of the settlers in preventing the work of the farmers, putting the soldiers there in the role of “defendants” of the Palestinian farmers. Nevertheless, actually, the soldiers almost always try to calm down the settlers in a soft way, then leave, giving the settlers complete freedom once more to attack the farmers. 

Just in the last two weeks, more then four farmers where injured or attacked by settlers intending to prevent them from working their land. The settlement security guards used tear gas and rubber bullets, in addition to verbal attacks and threats against them. Moreover, this occurred in front of internationals and NGO workers that were there to help the farmers.

The people of the villages decided to have this meeting to discuss about creating a kind of organization between them to improve practical actions on the ground. With this decision, there is an awareness that is fundamental to attract the attention of the media about this case, to spread the message not only about the political aspect of the Israeli colonization of Palestine, but also the suffering and the human face of the occupation.

According to international law, the settlements in the West Bank are illegal, and, in addition to that, the confiscation of land in an occupied territory is illegal. The occupation of the land in order to build the Wall or to expand the settlements is in fact not only a matter of occupation, but is clearly intended to force the people to move, cutting off their only economic income.

Eventually, Israeli will question all the Palestinians, at any level of the society, about their property and their land. The international community must demand that Israel respect international law, while the Palestinians must develop a better ability to inform the world about what is going on in Palestine.

The message that the Haulhul and Beit Ummar want make clear to Israel and the rest of the world is that they are not going to accept the situation as it is, and they will resist not only for themselves but first of all future generations.

In the meeting, the villagers agreed that is important not to give up working the land, despite the risk of being arrested or shot.

The most important thing is continue working and planting trees, otherwise it will be easy for the settlers to take it. If necessary, the farmers can go to work the lands in small groups or go and put tents on the land in order to always have someone there to control the situation and show them that the farmers are not afraid.

What is really essential to do is to request that as many internationals as possible come and work the land with them. This has three advantages: letting the internationals observe the situation and what is going on; having an outside party involved in the problem, that can act as a potential deterrent from settler attacks; and to put the soldiers in a situation where they are forced to stay there and control what is going on according to the role that the situation has put them in.

Actions to improve the situation on the ground will follow two directions: one is the popular resistance, and the other is the international and official activities. To organize these two main activities, the people of the two villages made a decision to form a committee, a sort of coordination office between them, formed by two people from each village and the Chairman, Mr. Farhan Alqam, the Mayor of Beit Ummar.

The idea behind the committee is that the action of single persons is ineffective, while working together as a collective force, involving all the people affected by the situation, along with people not yet involved but will be soon. The example to look to in this case is the Hebron experience, where the actions of the people there obliged the Israeli Authority to change the path of the Wall several times.

Another really daunting prospect for the farmers to deal with collectively is the offers by the settlers of large amount of money to buy their land, as is happening in the area of Tulkarem. The most important thing is to prevent farmers from accepting the money. To do this, there must be a system set up to help the farmers in any way.

In addition to that, and in order to send a clear message to the Israeli Civil Authority that the occupation policy cannot be formalized or legitimized, the farmers must not wait for any kind of permission from it, but instead to continue working their land freely as is their right by international law.

This struggle appears not to be only the struggle of the farmers, but the struggle of all the Palestinians. Youth, women, employees and all the people of the villages are involved and must be reached by the committee in order to create a global movement to oppose the occupation.

All the persons involved in the meeting were in agreement about the main purpose of this struggle: not to surrender to the occupation. Never to give up, despite the Wall, despite the checkpoints, despite the violence and the abuse perpetrated by the settlers, despite the arrests, despite the daily difficulties of life perpetrated with only the purpose of destroying not only ties to the land, not only dignity, but the identity of the Palestinians themselves.

Israel is still now unable to understand that the only reaction that its policies are creating is to awaken the forces and energy, at all levels of Palestinian society, to thwart to the occupation.