Susiya
The first part of the shift was devoted to a visit to Azzam and Wadha from Susiya, over whose heads the demolition order hangs. They are modest people who are smart and enlightened and they are in the right but in spite of that they live in constant uncertainty. Every morning the orders and the demolition may come. Azzam confirms that the authorities are speaking or leaving them about 20 percent of the land. That is, the tents, a place for the flock, the chicken hut and that’s it. He is determined not to budge from his land. He owns the Turkish Kushans (documents) which testify that this is his land. He tells us that representatives of the foreign embassies in Ramallah have been here. People come all the time from all over the world. It is certain that the Israeli government is aware of this, and therefore, despite not allowing them to remain since Liberman became the Minister of Defence, does not dare to destroy them in the meantime and is attempting to find a proper solution. In the meantime he is trying to work his lands.
The water flows through the pipes next to his tent but only reach the settlement of Susiya. The wells are his but he must not pump from them. The same is true of electricity wires. They have electricity and water because of the facilities established by peace organizations from the European Union. He and his wife plant flowers in every tire thrown in every piece of soil that blooms with vegetables and herbs. The sheep, the geese and the chickens are raised in spite of everything. Everything is as clean and tidy as people who love their home make them.
“You see that concrete that I poured among the natural stones here?” he says, “so as to create type of floor”. This, too, is forbidden to them. “The authorities told me that they would destroy it.”
“We wait,” he says.
“We’ll be in touch.” we promise that we’ll come anytime it is necessary, in the hope that enough people will cry out about what is happening here.
An unthinkable evil pervades this area and the heart goes out to these people whose existence is ignored.
Susiya
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Susiya The Palestinian area lies between the settlement of Susya and a military base. The residents began to settle in areas outside the villages in the 1830s and lived in caves, tents and sukkot. To this day they maintain a traditional lifestyle and their livelihood is based on agriculture and herding. Until the 1948 war, the farmers cultivated areas that extended to the Arad area. As a result of the war, a significant portion of their land left on the Israeli side was lost. After the 1967 war and the Israeli occupation, military camps were established in the area, fire zones and nature reserves were declared, and the land area was further reduced. The Jewish settlement in Susya began in 1979. Since then, there has been a stubborn struggle to remove the remains of Palestinian residents who refuse to leave their place of birth and move to nearby town Yatta. With the development of a tourist site in Khirbet Susya in the late 1980s (an ancient synagogue), dozens of families living in caves in its vicinity were deported. In the second half of the 1990s, a new form of settlement developed in the area - shepherds' farms of individual settlers. This phenomenon increased the tension between the settlers and the original, Palestinian residents, and led to repeated harassment of the residents of the farms towards the Palestinians. At the same time, demolition of buildings and crop destruction by security forces continued, as well as water and electricity prevention. In the Palestinian Susya, as in a large part of the villages of the southern Hebron Mountains, there is no running water, but the water pipe that supplies water to the Susya Jewish settlement passes through it. Palestinians have to buy expensive water that comes in tankers. Solar electricity is provided by a collector system, installed with donation funds. But the frequent demolitions in the villages do not spare water cisterns or the solar panels and power poles designed to transfer solar electricity between the villages. Updated April 2021, Anat T.
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