Israeli authorities confiscate land from Deir Sharaf to build new checkpoint

from International Solidarity Movement (ISM)

Israeli authorities have recently removed Beit Iba checkpoint, north of the city of Nablus, only to build a new checkpoint 2km away on the same road.  This new checkpoint is located west of the village of Deir Sharaf, closer to the illegal Israeli settlement of Shave Shomeron.  The new checkpoint is being built on at least 70 dunums of confiscated village land.  Most of this land consists of agricultural fields belonging to 23 families from Deir Sharaf.  Dozens of olive trees are to be cut down or confiscated when the new checkpoint is implemented.

In 2006, when the settlement of Shave Shomeron was built, around 700 dunums of land and more than 700 olive trees were taken from Deir Sharaf village.  The villagers have since been denied access to this land, apart from three days each year during the olive harvest.

A villager from Deir Sharaf speaks about this new confiscation of village lands:

“There has already been taken so much land taken from us because of the settlement, why do they need to move the checkpoint? When they
confiscated our land and our trees three years ago, we where denied access to it the whole year except three days during the harvest. As every farmer knows, three days to do the harvest is impossible, it is a big joke. When the harvest began, the grass around the trees was a meter high and the trees were in terrible condition duevto the lack of careful treatment that the olive fields require. This is injustice, this land belongs to us. We will not accept more land being confiscated.”