Palestinian farmer says he was barred from his farm twice
He intends to wait for IDF’s permission
After being denied access to his farmlands twice last week, Mustafa Sabah, a farmer from Urif, a village south of Nablus, said he has no other choice but to wait for the IDF to coordinate a time for him to plow his farmlands.
“I don’t want to have to deal with the settlers screaming and yelling at me for plowing my land. So I plan to wait for the army to tell me when I can go,” Sabah said in a phone interview on Sunday.
Sabah went to his farmlands last Wednesday to plow his barley and wheat crops. Shortly after he began, a few residents of the nearby Yitzhar settlement approached and yelled at him to go back to his village.
“I tried to tell them that I am allowed to be here because my land is in Area B, but they continued to scream and yell,” Sabah said.
Palestinians are supposed to be allowed unrestricted access to their property in Area B, which is under Israeli security and Palestinian administrative control, according to the Oslo Accords.
Amid the altercation between the settlers and Sabah, soldiers arrived at the scene and instructed Sabah to go home, but agreed that he could return on Friday to finish plowing.
Palestinians and settlers frequently clash when farmers go to their lands located near settlements during fruit and vegetable harvests, especially during the olive harvest in the fall.
Sabah returned to his farmlands on Friday alongside Zakaria Sede, a Rabbis for Human Rights fieldworker, who came to help him in case he and the settlers had another altercation.
When Sabah started to plow his crops, a Yitzhar settlement guard came to him and yelled at him to leave his land.
“He was screaming in my face that this is Area C and [saying that] I have no right to be here,” Sabah said. “I tried to explain, as I did with the settlers on Wednesday, that the land actually falls in Area B, but he wasn’t interested in listening.”
As they did two days earlier, soldiers arrived and attempted to resolve the situation, but ultimately decided to send both the settlers and Sabah home.
Sede, who filmed the event, said the IDF failed to carry out its responsibility to protect Palestinians in Area B and instead “carried out the instructions of the Yitzhar settlement guard, expelling Sabah from his land.”
The IDF spokesperson, however, rejected Sede’s accusation, saying that the soldiers made their own decision in ordering Sabah to leave.
“We sent the farmer away because we wanted to prevent friction between the settlers and the farmer,” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson added that the army plans to coordinate with Sabah to provide him with access to his farmlands in the near future.
The Yitzhar representative did not respond to a request for comment.
Sabah said that he hopes the army will inform him soon, because he wants to finish plowing his crops.
“I want to plow the crops in a safe manner, where I will not have to deal with all the screaming and yelling,” Sabah said.