An Nu’man

Decreasing options and increasing hardships: An uncertain future for the resident’sof this West Bank village separated from its neighbours.October 2008Research and writing: Niina KarlingResearch, writing, editing: Scott SmithPhotographs: Scott Smith

Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme for Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) supports Palestiniansand Israelis working for peace by monitoring and reporting violations of human rights and international law, offering protection by accompanying local communities in daily activities, and by advocating with churches for a peaceful end to the occupation. The programme, which began in2002, is coordinated by the World Council of Churches (WCC) within the Churches Commissionon International Affairs (CCIA).

Introduction

This report discusses Israel’s infringement of a number of human rights of residents of thePalestinian village of An Nu’man and its severe consequences on their right to work, to healthcare, to education and simply the right to a livelihood. We include relevant facts and their relatedlegal context as we outline the main barriers to the above freedoms while we also include someshort testimonies from residents in relation to their treatment at the hands of the Israeli forces.

Setting the scene

From An Nu’man you can see the towering apartment blocks of Har Homa, an Israeli settlement just a couple kilometres from the village boundaries, where the cranes of development are seenworking all day long. From the settlement, it is possible to see increased livelihood, opportunityand a future. From An Nu’man you see a settlement inching closer, a cement surveillance tower behind you, and a highway that you can never use. Planning is impossible in the village andmoving the only viable future.Deemed by the Israeli government to be living illegally in the same homes they have had for generations, options for the residents of An Nu’man are dwindling fast. Their removal from their homes is a slow, indirect one but no less effective. Rather than forcibly removing the people theIsraeli government confines them in a closed space where they cannot expand their families, their land or their homes. This leads to the residents having no other option but to do this necessaryexpanding elsewhere – An Nu’man is bleeding its inhabitants. The expansion of Har Homasettlement is on schedule.

Background

An Nu’man is a small village south east of Jerusalem, lying just inside the separation barrier atMazmouria checkpoint. Some 200 people live there in some 20 homes

surrounded by three EastJerusalem settlements: Har Homa, Umm Tuba and Tsur Baher. Residents can only enter thevillage through one checkpoint and only then if they are registered residents and on the list –visitors are not allowed. The normal duties such as shopping and going to school are greatlycomplicated by this checkpoint and harassment by Israeli soldiers or border police can beproblematic.An Nu’man’s problems can largely be considered to be a bureaucratic mistake. The village wasannexed to Jerusalem after 1967, when Israel occupied the West Bank, but in spite of this, mostof the villagers have West Bank IDs due to being registered as residents of a neighbouring villageinside the West Bank since it was in this village where their village leader or

mukhtar

lived. Theabsurd result is that the residents and their houses belong to different legal and administrativesystems: the houses and land are part of the (annexed) Jerusalem municipality, while theinhabitants are residents of the West Bank.

This makes the residents of An Nu’man illegalresidents in the eyes of Israeli authorities, because people with West Bank IDs are not allowed tolive on the Israeli side. The mistake has yet to be rectified and following the general closure of theWest Bank in 1993, the problems of An Nu’man only got worse.Throughout the 1990s no permits were granted to build in the village and those who did buildwere promptly issued with demolition orders or forced to pay fines. In 1996 the children of AnNu’man were forced to leave the school in Umm Tuba, a village north of them, as they did nothave the Jerusalem residency and so were not entitled to use the municipality’s school system.The road link to the nearest city, Bethlehem, was repeatedly closed for periods of 20-30 daysbetween 1998 and 2003. During this time water pipes to the village were broken by Israeli

Ta’ayush – The Silent Transfer: The case of El-Nu’man village. www.taayush.org