Anata Village

Description:

Anata is considered by the Palestinian people as an historical site. Anata means "beautiful place", and was a popular place in ancient times for travelers or pilgrims to stop and rest before continuing to Jerusalem, some five kilometers away. Known for its beautiful gardens, some believe that Anata took its name from the goddess of love and beauty.

Today Anata has a population of approximately 12,000 people and had, before the Occupation of 1967, 30,572 dunums of land included in its village limits, mostly agricultural. Al Issawiya village borders Anata to the south, Hizma village to the north, Shu'fat to the West and Jericho to the East.

Before 1967, this village relied mainly on agriculture and stonecutting as its main sources of income. In accordance to an agreement with the Jordanian land registration officials, some 14,000 dunums of the villages lands were registered as privately owned, and the remaining 16,000 dunums were considered state land. The villagers used the 16,000 dunums of village land for agriculture or grazing purposes.

After Occupation:

After the virtual annexation of Arab Jerusalem and the surrounding villages after 1967 (made official in early 1980), life in Anata village changed dramatically. Arbitrarily cut in half after the new "border" was drawn, Anata has born the brunt of the brutal policies used by the Israeli government to solidify its control over the West Bank and Arab Jerusalem.

Anata village lies to the north of Jerusalem off the main road to Ramallah. Half of this village lies in within the Jerusalem municipality, and therefore falls under Israeli law. The other half is found on the West Bank side of the green line, and is subject to the military law of occupation. Approximately 1/3 of the inhabitants of Anata hold Jerusalem identity cards, and 2/3 hold West Bank.

This peculiar divided status has produced a wide range of difficulties for this village. The village was primarily agricultural before the Occupation in 1967. After the Israeli confiscations took most of the arable land around Anata, it became more and more difficult to make a living in agriculture. Approximately 20,000 dunums of the village's lands were confiscated to build Alon, Kfar Adumim, Almon and Ma'aleh Adumim settlements. These settlements surround Anata on three sides, and the two roads to the south and west together serve to completely circumscribe Anata village, isolate it from its agricultural areas, and totally restrict the possibility of expansion.

In addition, it became increasingly difficult to obtain permits to continue the work of the stone-cutting factories, and the taxes for such establishments became too high to pay. Slowly even this source of revenue was eliminated for the local population, and conditions for Anata continued to deteriorate.

The people of Anata were forced, increasingly, to try to find work in Israeli factories. But because most of the residents of this village hold West Bank identity, and as a result of the continuing closure of Jerusalem, this option doesn't even exist. Unemployment is therefore very high, and because most of Anata's lands have already been confiscated, overcrowding along with unemployment have become Anata's most pressing problems. Houses frequently have between 12 and 20 people living in them.

The Jerusalem municipality has traditionally used a variety of methods to restrict village expansion. Land confiscation, settlement building, road construction and other activity has served to limit the size and populations of Arab villages surrounding Jerusalem. One of the most prevalent tools for restriction is the control over the issuance of building permits, and the subsequent demolition of houses which hold no permit. It is extremely difficult to obtain a building permit from the Israeli municipality, and once approved they are prohibitively expensive.

In Anata, in addition, the part of the village that lies over the green line falls under the jurisdiction of military orders which, after 1967, gradually replaced the old Jordanian laws which had previously governed the area. These military orders replaced the old planning committees with militarily appointed planning committees for the approval of skeleton plans and building permits. Settlers frequently serve on such committees. The result, of course, is that fewer and fewer permits are issued, and more and more houses are scheduled for demolition.

Building projects and new economic initiatives are thereby discouraged, and traditional avenues for finding employment and additional revenue for the town do not exist. Young people cannot get married, as there is no work and nowhere to live. The chances for improving living standards seems difficult indeed.

West Bank Anata has been particularly hard hit by these policies. Twelve homes have been demolished since 1967, and another 50 or so homes remain at risk for lying outside the militarily-imposed village limits - many with demolition orders already served against them.

LAWE began representing residents of this village in 1994, protesting both that the village zoning plans were racist, arbitrarily defined, and unresponsive to the needs of the local population, but also that house demolitions constitute collective punishment. LAWE has not taken on every house demolition case in Anata, but of the 20 cases they adopted, only four were successful.

Now, after the signing of the Oslo agreements, much of the West Bank part of Anata lies in Area C. This adds additional vulnerability to the homes which lie both in Area C and outside the village limits. There has been a concentrated effort on the part of the Israeli Civil Administration to remove as much of the Palestinian population from Area C as possible, particularly in those areas around settlements. The pattern of new land confiscation and house demolition notices, most recently in the Ramallah area, clearly reflects this.

Thus the situation in Anata village, like many Arab areas around Jerusalem, is critical. The Arab population is being slowly squeezed out of this area, in accordance with the Jerusalem municipality's policy of creating and maintaining a clear Jewish majority in the Eastern part of the city. Indeed, Israeli policies both new and old serve to establish important demographic precedent before the end of the final status negotiations.