Just south of
Jerusalem, a battle of wills between Jews and Arabs is underway for
control of state-owned lands. The latest clash took place in Netzer,
Gush Etzion - and the Jews won.
Of late, Women in Green and residents of
Gush Etzion have concentrated their efforts on the lands between Alon
Shvut and Elazar, just a few kilometers south of Jerusalem. The Women
in Green organization has held several events there, against efforts by
local Arabs who are "taking over hundreds of dunams [quarter-acres] of
land in order to prevent Jewish contiguity between Elazar, Alon Shvut
and Efrat. They plant fruit
trees and build terraces there, even though this is not privately-owned
Arab land but rather State-owned lands."
This past Friday, Jewish activists set
out to plow two plots of land in Netzer, adjacent to a spot where
Arabs set fire a week ago to a water pipe that supplies water to
hundreds of recently-planted Jewish trees.
After some two
hours of tractor work, an Arab clan gathered around the tractor and
began shouting, cursing, claiming the land was theirs, and preventing
further Jewish work there. Three days later, early Monday morning
at 5:00 AM, Jewish pioneers returned and embarked on a mass planting
operation. Upon its completion, two Jews remained to connect the
irrigation system.
Justice is Served
But
several Arabs then arrived on the scene and renewed their aggression,
trying to uproot the newly-planted seedlings. Both sides called the
police, and justice was finally served when Civil Administration
officials arrived, examined the maps, and announced that the area was
indeed State-owned and not, as the Arabs had claimed, Arab land.
"This was a small victory in the
grand struggle over the lands of Eretz Yisrael throughout Judea and
Samaria," said Women in Green leader Nadia Matar. "Had our activists
not planted on those lands, the Arabs would have taken control of them
- and these lands, too, would have been lost to the Jewish People. [Our] determined stand forced the Civil Administration to intervene and admit that these areas are Jewish."
"It's sad that the Civil Administration is not doing its job,"
said activist leader Yehudit Katzover, "of preserving and maintaining
these lands of the Jewish People for the Jewish People - and so we have to do it."
The Jewish interest is not for financial or real estate profit,
the activists emphasize, "but solely to hold on to our land reserves
for the Jewish People