VIDEO - The Jaba Village Regional Council assisted by the Yesh Din Human Rights Organization submitted a petition to the High Court on Wednesday claiming that the fence erected near the West Bank settlement Geva in Binyamin has prevented the villagers from tending to their land for years. The petition demanded that it be removed.
The petition claimed that farmers from the village have been denied access to their land, some 400 dunams (about 100 acres), since 2003 when a fence was erected that annexed much of their land to the settlement. The Palestinians claimed that the fence is illegal. They said it is unclear who put the fence up, but that the Civil Administration is not doing anything on the issue.
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Aerial photos taken between 1997 and 2009 were included along with the petition. The Palestinians claim that the photos show that the lands that were regularly cultivated by the Palestinian farmers have turned into fallow land because access to them was denied.
They explained that residents of Jaba have worked the land for generations. Estimates are that some 80% of the village residents have rights to the lands annexed and trapped behind the settlement wall.
In the petition, the village council head and his deputy ask the State to provide an explanation as to its inaction guaranteeing Palestinians access to their lands and taking steps to remove the illegal fence.
"Very often, this kind of conduct, whereby access is denied and roadblocks are erected to expand the size of a 'Palestinians-free' zone around settlements, has been formally assisted by the army, which issues land-seizure orders and creates what is known as 'special security zones'. This is not true in this case, as this petition shows," wrote Attorneys Michael Sfard, Shlomy Zachary and Avisar Lev – Yesh Din legal counsel, who filed the petition.