The tale of the village of Nebi Sahleh is typical: residents of this West Bank Palestinian village are prohibited from accessing major parts of their land (privately owned, with paper proof) due to invisible “buffer zones” around a nearby settlement.
Not only has public land allotted for the village been appropriated by Israel to build this settlement, but much private land has been taken as well. And what land is nearby, Palestinian construction and even inhabiting is prohibited to maintain the buffer zone. All of this is ostensibly to protect the settlers, but serves the settlement’s expansion because private land left “untended” reverts to Israel’s control within a year. Essentially, Israel blocks Palestinians from their land for security reasons, then steals it because Palestinians can’t access their land. It’s the insanity of the occupation, ensconced in law.
In Nebi Sahleh, the catalyst for forming a non-violent protest committee in the style of Budrus was the buffer zone’s prohibition of their accessing the town’s privately-owned spring. The town appealed to the Israeli High Court and achieved marginal victories upholding their ownership and rights to access, yet find the Israeli military still prohibiting it.
Furthermore, the Civil Administration zoned the plot an “archeological site” and thus blocked any development by the Palestinians. But while visiting Nebi Sahleh to meet the organizers of their committee, we stopped by the spring to witness settler teens digging a swimming pool in this so-called archeological site with pitchforks and shovels! See the video below for what happened when the settler guard arrived and called the IDF on us: