Saadat Gharib lives in Beit Ijza, a Palestinian village between Ramallah and Jerusalem. In 1978, Israelis set up their caravans nearby and offered the Gharib family, owners of 100 dunams of land (10 hectares), to buy one dunam, which they refused.
Then over the years, the Israeli government gradually seized plots, allowing other settlers to settle in order to create Givon Hahadasha, an illegal settlement under international law like all those in the West Bank, a Palestinian territory occupied since 1967 by the Hebrew state.
Of the 100 dunums of land, Mr. Gharib only has about 60 left. Palestinian Authority.
His small square-shaped house, surrounded by an eight-meter-high fence, appears today to be placed in the middle of what looks like a housing estate, with neat residences, some of which have small inflatable swimming pools in their gardens.
To leave his home, Saadat Gharib, 40, must take a screened corridor and pass through a heavy yellow door equipped with eight cameras, controlled remotely by the Israeli security forces. Below, a tunnel allows military vehicles to use a road reserved for them.
- Legal procedures -
Of all the legal proceedings launched by the Gharib family, few have been successful, despite the help of the Israeli anti-colonization NGO Yesh Din ("There is justice", in Hebrew).
In 2012, the Israeli courts granted some 3% of the land that the Gharib claim to own and used by the settlers as a parking lot and a park. But the decision has not yet been implemented.
In 2008, the Supreme Court reversed security measures requiring the presentation of an identity document in front of the cameras to pass through the heavy yellow door, and at certain times only. Now the family can come and go anytime.
Except when the security forces claim a risk, in which case they can close the door at will.
"During all these years, we have lived a difficult life," Saadat told AFP, accusing Israeli forces of having often searched his house, made arrests and always sided with the settlers in the event of a confrontation.
He placed a blue tarp on the lower part of the fence installed by the Israeli army around the garden so that his four children "can play without being disturbed or afraid of the settlers", with whom there have already been incidents by the past, including insults and stone throwing, he said.
“This fence is also unpleasant for us, it is in front of our eyes,” says Avi Zipory, one of the first Israelis to found the settlement.
According to him, the Palestinian family lives on Jewish land and the settlement of around 1,000 inhabitants has received the green light from Israeli justice. He says he does not want to destroy the Gharib house but regrets that they "do not accept an alternative plan, financial compensation, another land".
- "All the money in the world" -
"I don't know when all this will end," breathes Saadat Gharib, who says above all that he is afraid for his children.
Now cut off from his olive trees by the colony, to which he is not authorized to go, he says he depends on the goodwill of the army, which must grant him a permit to cultivate them.
A Kafkaesque situation that will not make him give up his land, he assures us.
One day, he was asked how much it would cost to leave the place with his whole family.
"I said, as my father had said before me: this is our land, which my father inherited from his grandfather. We will not sell it to anyone, even for all the money in the world".
