Elderly Palestinian secures return of confiscated lands
Published: Mar 18, 2010 23:41 Updated: Mar 18, 2010 23:41
RAMALLAH: An Israeli court ordered the return of 730 dunams (730 hectares) of lands to a Palestinian in the village of Khirbet Zakariya after years of dispute with Israeli legal system.
Mohammed Atallah, the head of Khirbet Zakariya village council, said that the Israeli authorities confiscated the 730 dunams for the expansion of Gush Etzion settlement bloc, near West Bank city of Bethlehem.
Atallah said the lands belong to 100-year-old resident, Haj Ibrahim Atallah. He said the Israeli court accepted a petition by Palestinian attorney Mohammed Al-Dahleh and ordered the Israeli government to return the lands to its Palestinian owner.
The official said that the “Dahleh presented to court documents from 1967 that prove Haj Ibrahim Atallah owned this land.”
“The Israeli government cannot publicly take our land from us and give it to the occupiers. So instead they have threatened to demolish all our homes, and to build the wall around us.”
Khirbet Zakariya is surrounded by a total of twelve Israeli settlements, plus eight settlement outposts, all part of the Gush Etzion settlement bloc.
Figures from the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics state that at least 41,000 Israeli occupiers live within this bloc, excluding those in the outposts.
New homes continue to be built across Gush Etzion as it is very popular among occupiers since it is near Jerusalem.
The village, by comparison, has a total of 650 residents who share sixty houses between them and have been banned from building any new homes for the last forty years. The villagers, who own 8,000 dunams of land between the settlements, are all farmers.

Comments
MYRON JOSHUA
Mar 20, 2010 10:52
Report abuseWhile the Palestinians of Khirbet Zakariya and the Jews of the region have good mutual individual relations, the collective community and land rights of the Palestinians have been seriously neglected to say the least.