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Land and Water Establishment For Immediate Release: Tel: (972) (02) 812364/824559 February 25, 1995 Fax: (972) (02) 811072
Demonstration in Support of Sabri Garib Prevented by Police
On 25 February, The Land Defense Committee for the Ramallah area and Gush Shalom, with the participation of Land and Water Establishment and the Alternative Information Center, organized a demonstration in defense of Sabri Garib's land in the village of Beit Idza. This joint Palestinian/Israeli initiative planned to go to Mr. Garib's house and plant olive trees in support of his long-standing struggle in the protection of his land against the settlement of Givon Hadassa. This demonstration met with the same predictable repressive response on the part of the Israeli Civil Administration. The total area surrounding Beit Idza and Givon Hadassa (the settlement which has enclosed Garib's land) was declared a closed military zone, and three roadblocks were put in place to enforce this.
About 45 demonstrators, which included both Palestinian and Israeli supporters, gathered by the main road block on the road leading to Givon Hadassa settlement. Mr. Abdul Jawad Salih, from the Land Defense Committee, Michel Warshawski from the Alternative Information Center, Uri Avnery from Gush Shalom, and a member of the Arab Democratic Party gave brief speeches of solidarity. This took place under the heavy surveillance of regular and border police, which numbered nearly as many as the demonstrators themselves.
Sabri Garib's story began early in 1978, when 13 dunums of his land were confiscated as state lands. This agricultural land had been in his family for generations. Givon Hadassa settlement was then founded on these lands. In 1990, his remaining 14 dunums of land on which his house is located was also confiscated, although he was "allowed" to keep his house. The settlers have erected a fence only several meters from his house, leaving him a small opening to access his home. His house, once surrounded by fields but now encircled by barbed wire, stands as a tragic testimony to the extremes of settlement aggression against Palestinian landowners.
Land and Water Establishment supports this type of joint Palestinian/Israeli initiative, and considers joint action crucial to the ongoing struggle to remove settlements from the Occupied Territories. LAWE sees the closing of this peaceful demonstration as consistent with recent Israeli policies to continue its repressive policies in the Occupied Territories in the wake of the Oslo Accord, and to protect the settlements in the West Bank. LAWE deplores the actions of the Israeli police in arbitrarily forbidding peaceful demonstrations as a restriction on the right of Palestinians to protest peacefully against occupation, and as contrary to international laws and the Oslo and Cairo Accords.
Land and Water Establishment is a non-governmental organization, dedicated to preserving human rights through legal advocacy. Their activity concentrates on land confiscation, property destruction and environmental issues.