This is nothing new. When I was in Hebron in 2019 I talked to a farmer family too, but it was even worse for him because his family house has been demolished 3 times already and when I was there I saw that the IDF bulldozered his whole farm, ripped out all the trees, destroyed all vegetables and fruit plants. He even traveled to Geniva to talk in front of the UN about their situation but nothing changed. His name is Atta Jaber, you can google him for more context.
I also recorded a episode of my podcast when I was there https://jeena.net/pods/21
I have a friend who used to volunteer in Palestine. One of his jobs dealt with evictions. Basically if you’re a person anywhere in the world and you can go through historical documents and find a suggestion that your ancestors may have owned property in a certain place you can present that to Israel and they give the current residents, many who have owned their houses for multiple generations, some of whom have records of their relatives buying the land from the first family, 24 hours to leave.
There are troops of volunteers who will come down with a moving van and help you load your entire life in because there’s nothing else you can do.
It’s criminal.
So what happens when two distant cousins try to steal the same land?
I’m betting there are court cases about it… Now I’m imagining a sadistic version of Judge Judy where two entitled pricks argue about who gets to steal a person’s entire life out from under them.
I’d watch it, but only if it was actually some sort of prank show where the two jackasses didn’t know they were testifying against themselves in a criminal proceeding.
Probably a scrap, or maybe they just get to pick another random palestinian house to steal?
I cannot imagine. The journalist. The farmer. The translators. The friends and family and communities. I’m just… so shocked and overwhelmed and a little lost about it all.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
It’s morning as our NPR team is traveling from Tel Aviv to the West Bank to see a small town called Deir Istiya, and to meet a 54-year-old farmer named Ayoub Abuhejleh.
He tells us that settlers rolled in with diggers, tore up the dirt road to his fields and severed the water lines he’d installed – an accusation that NPR was unable to confirm.
She and her colleague Dani Brodsky, the director of the organization’s Occupied Palestinian Territory department, have joined us on our trip to Abuhejleh’s home.
Our team pulls on helmets and flak jackets marked “PRESS” in big white letters before we begin to walk with Abuhejleh to the spot that he says looks onto his fields.
Soldiers walk Abuhejleh out of sight around a hill, and as we make our way back to where the road was dug up, Rabbi Dana tells us she’s worried.
He tells us that after he was led away, blindfolded and handcuffed, he was driven to a military office in a nearby settlement where he was mocked and questioned for hours.
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