RAMALLAH, West Bank, 13 June 2007 — “Our suffering increases day by day, we have lost contact with the outside world. The surrounding Israeli settlements, that the invaders have built, are suffocating the village from all sides. Since the wall was built, nonresidents were prohibited from entering the village unless they obtain an entry permit from occupation authorities,” says Bilal Al-Kilani.

What Al-Kilani, head of Um Ar-Reehan village council, is summarizing is the increasing suffering of the inhabitants due to the separation wall that was built several years ago. The wall has isolated the village from the rest of the West Bank causing hardship to its people and threatening their presence as they find it more and more difficult to continue living in the village.

Um Ar-Reehan is one of Jenin’s northwestern villages that is set on a number of hills. It is inhabited by 400 people only. The occupiers were able to isolate the village after the wall swallowed up 5,544 of its 6,736 dunums (dunum = 1,000 square meters). Al-Kilani believes that the occupiers confiscated and isolated the village because of its strategic location, surrounded by the Shakid, Raihan, and Hananit settlements. The village is surrounded by the largest forest in the West Bank. The village has also large areas of land compared to its small population.

Speaking of the every day torment that Um Ar-Reehan inhabitants face, Al-Kilani said: “The Occupation Army opens the village gates from seven o’clock in the morning, and closes it again, at six-thirty in the evening. This has increased the suffering of the people who go to work outside the village”.

Al-Kilani, however, said that the agricultural sector has suffered the most because of the confiscation of large areas of arable land for the construction of the wall as well as the large numbers of boars released by the occupiers in the area which stops many villagers cultivating their fields for fear that the boars will damage their crops.

“The occupier is controlling our livelihood through destroying our agriculture, which is our main source of income. Furthermore, and due to implementation of the isolation policy, the inhabitants are prohibited from working within the green line or reaching the West Bank to work,” added Al-Kilani.

As for the effect of the isolation on the health, educational and social services, Kilani explained, “The continued siege imposed on the village has prevented people from visiting their relatives in other villages. A few months after the Intifada started, the occupation army set up checkpoints at the village’s eastern and southern entrances. Thus the village was cut off from the nearby villages of Tora, to the west, and Ya’bad, which provide the village with its health and educational needs. Also, the blocking of the routes, leading to the nearby Zionist settlements, adds to the every day suffering of its people.”

Al-Kilani added: “Palestinians from other parts of the West Banks are not allowed to enter the village, except for a very limited number of teachers from Ya’bad teaching at Um Ar-Reehan and teachers from Um Ar-Reehan working at Ya’bad, who acquired an entry permit from the occupation forces, after a lengthy and tiresome process.”

No health services, even for critical conditions, exist in the village. Al-Kilani explained how the occupiers only allow ambulances into the village via Jenin’s Coordination Office. He went on to say: “Most of the time ambulances are forced to wait for a long time at the checkpoint before they are permitted to leave to the hospital in Jenin or the health center in Ya’bad.”

“Till 2000 health services were provided in the village. Now, and unless the ‘Medecins Sans Frontieres’ reach the village, parents have to travel each month, to Ya’bad, to vaccinate their children.”

Implementing the land confiscation policies, the occupation’s “Civil Administration” prohibited the inhabitant of Um Ar-Reehan from building new houses. And despite the overcrowded classes in the only primary school available in the village, the occupation’s “Civil Administration” did not allow us to expand the school. Secondary school students are forced to seek education at the nearby village of Ya’bad. Sometimes they wait for long hours at the checkpoints, and then have to walk a long distance before finding a cab that can take them to school. The students too are bearing the increasing torment every day.

The village also has no electricity and the council has asked for the village to be linked to the national network. Yet the biggest concern of the inhabitants, as Al-Kilani explains, is the loss of the village’s identity as there are no maps identifying the village’s borders.