Palestinian Family Fights To Remain in Israeli Settlement
With the help of human rights groups, Hani Awad has resisted Israeli attempts to evacuate him and his family from an Israeli settlement in the West Bank, Linah Alsaafin writes.
In 2005, Israeli settlers had completed confiscating 5,000 dunums [about 1,250 acres] out of the Palestinian Salfit-based village of Mas-ha, which had been 8,000 [2,000 acres] dunums in size.
The villagers watched uneasily as Jewish caravans set up on their lands in the mid-1980s, which later fully expanded into the construction of three settlements: El Kana, Etz Efraim, and Sha’arei Tikvah.
Almost overnight, Hani Amer lost 27 dunums [about 8 acres] of his land. He now lives on the one remaining dunum, but within the newly demarcated boundaries of the El Kana settlement, a unique case that the Israeli authorities attempted, but failed to correct.
Hani’s new neighbors, Jewish settlers, did their best to terrorize him and his family into leaving. They would gather at night, across from one of the four fenced-off areas of Hani’s home, and shoot live ammunition in the air. Sometimes they threw rocks at the windows, but the settlers always would chant and scream racist remarks.
