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href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/our-mountain-palestinians-repel-settlers-emboldened-netanyahus-green-light">https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/our-mountain-palestinians-repel-settlers-emboldened-netanyahus-green-light</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">'This is our mountain': Palestinians
repel settlers emboldened by Netanyahu's words</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">By Shatha Hammad in Beita,
Occupied West Bank - 5 March, 2020<br>
</div>
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<article data-history-node-id="161051" role="article">
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<p>Around the stove, about 30 Palestinians gather
inside a big tent on top of Mount Al-Urma, east of
the town of Beita in the occupied West Bank, taking
a rest and preparing for the latest confrontation
with Israeli soldiers and settlers.</p>
<p>
Hours earlier on Monday, settlers had tried for a
second time to reach the top of the mountain, but
the residents of Beita, which lies south of Nablus,
had quickly gathered to defend their lands.</p>
<p>
Clashes erupted, during which the Israeli army
opened fire, wounding two Palestinians with live
ammunition and 10 others with rubber bullets.</p>
</div>
<p>Residents of Beita have continued their daily sit-in
at the top of Al-Urma since last Thursday after they
were alerted to calls by settlers on social media to
seize the mountain and turn it into an Israeli
religious tourist route.</p>
<p>On Friday, the settlers had made their first attempt
to seize Mount Al-Urma but were repelled by hundreds
of locals.</p>
<div>
<p>The confrontation left 93 people injured by Israeli
live fire and rubber bullets.</p>
<p>
A huge Palestinian flag, measuring 4 metres by 3.5
metres, was flown 25 metres above the top of the
mountain, and people started going regularly to the
site, declaring it an open sit-in.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>On Monday, when the settlers made their second
attempt, 19-year-old Adham Zuhair told MEE that
along with dozens of other youths taking part in the
sit-in he had watched as the settlers tried to
ascend the mountain towards them.</p>
<p>
“We contacted the villagers, the mosques’ speakers
began asking people to head to Mount Al-Urma... in
less than 10 minutes hundreds of people had arrived
here," he said.</p>
<p>
The settlers retreated and withdrew under the cover
of live fire from the Israeli army.</p>
<p>
Zuhair said: "I am here 24 hours a day, I don't get
tired nor do I feel bored... I will stay here to
protect our lands, whatever it costs."</p>
</div>
<h3>Netanyahu promises</h3>
<p>On Wednesday, in the nearby village of Qusra, Israeli
bulldozers began clearing land in what residents said
was an attempt to confiscate it for future illegal
settlements.</p>
<p>Villagers from Qusra challenged the Israeli soldiers
guarding the bulldozers as they worked in a field
close to the Migdalim settlement.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>'I am here 24 hours a day, I don't get tired nor do
I feel bored... I will stay here to protect our
lands, whatever it costs'</p>
<p><em>- Adham Zuhair</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Palestininans say settlers had been emboldened by US
President Donald Trump's Middle East plan and Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promise to annex
settlements.</p>
<p>Netanyahu's right-wing Likud Party leads the vote
count after Monday's election, but with 99 percent of
votes counted on Wednesday he was still short of
securing enough seats for a governing coalition.</p>
<p>Victory would pave the way for Netanyahu to make good
on his pledge to annex settlements in the West Bank
under Trump's plan.</p>
<h3>Previous battles</h3>
<div>
<p>Dozens of young men, helping maintain the flag
mast, are dotted around the tent on Mount Al-Urma,
as older men chat and groups of children play with
the remains of gas bombs and a sound bomb left by
the Israeli army.</p>
<p>
Despite the cold, the only conversations among the
people in the tent are about their pride in being
able to protect their lands.</p>
<p>
While one young man prepared coffee and began
distributing it, other volunteers started making
freekeh soup, a popular Palestinian food usually
prepared in the winter as it provides the body with
energy and warmth.</p>
</div>
Leaning on his crutch, one of the volunteers, Muhammad
Khrweish, tells how he was injured in clashes in Beita
on 6 April 1988, when the villagers had previously
confronted an attack by settlers.
<div>
<p>
Khrweish told MEE: "Since 1923, 70 people from the
town of Beita were martyred and 300 injured.</p>
<p>
"Meanwhile, the occupation has destroyed 25 houses,
and detained about 3,000 people since 1967. It was
all in the defence of our territory, and it is
action we will continue to take."</p>
<p>
Khrweish remembers how his village's residents
protected Beita’s Jabal Sabih two years ago, when
settlers attempted to take it.</p>
<p>
"We spent two weeks sitting on the mountain so that
we could prevent the settlers from seizing it," he
said.</p>
</div>
<h3>'We will not abandon our lands'</h3>
<div>
<p>"Today, the settlers are testing themselves again
in Beita," said Khrweish.</p>
<p>
"They gathered 750 settlers and 200 soldiers on
Friday 28 February, and more than 1,200 residents of
the village came and defended their lands."</p>
<p>
"The army and the settlers will try to take
advantage of any moment we leave the mountain, so we
will continue to stay here... </p>
</div>
<blockquote>
<p>'We will not give up the mountain and will not
abandon our lands'</p>
<p><em>- Muhammad Khrweish</em></p>
</blockquote>
<div>
<p>“We will not give up the mountain and will not
abandon our lands," said Khrweish.</p>
<p>
Muhammad Jamal Bani Muflih, a 12-year-old child at
the scene, told MEE: "I used to come here with my
family or friends to take a walk and take pictures.</p>
<p>
"Now I come every day to defend the mountain and
prevent the settlers from approaching it.</p>
<p>
"The only way to protect the mountain is to stay on
it... We will not allow them to steal it from us,
this is our mountain, and the monuments on it prove
that."</p>
</div>
<h3>'We demand his immediate release'</h3>
<div>
<p>Last Thursday, settlers had published appeals on
Facebook, calling for people to descend on Mount
Al-Urma the next day, which Palestinian journalist
Mujahid Beni Mafelah republished after translating
them on his Facebook page.</p>
<p>
Following the publication of his translation,
Mafelah was arrested by Israeli police on charges of
incitement on social media.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Assad Bani Mafelah, the journalist's brother, told
MEE that the police had arrested his brother in the
evening of last Thursday while he and his family
were heading to Beita, leaving his wife and two
children, aged two and three, near the Israeli
settlement.</p>
<p>
"The Israeli police continue to detain Mujahid in
the Israeli detention centre and have extended his
detention twice so far, the second time on Monday,"
said Assad.</p>
<p>
"We are surprised that Mujahid, who was undertaking
his role as a journalist in translating and
publishing, was arrested.</p>
<p>
"He only republished what the settlers wrote on
their pages. As his family, we are worried about
him, and we demand his immediate release allowing
him to return to his children".</p>
</div>
<h3>No evidence of Jewish monuments</h3>
<div>
<p>Mount Al-Urma, which is spread over 250 dunums, is
one of the most important archaeological areas in
Nablus, and the highest peak in Beita. </p>
<p>
According to historians, it has been inhabited since
the early Bronze Age, about 3,200 years ago.</p>
<p>
On top of the mountain, walls which still exist
indicate that an ancient castle was built there,
under which seven water tanks were dug into the
rock.</p>
<p>
Mufid Salah, the director of the Antiquities
Directorate in Nablus, told MEE that the capacity of
each tank was at least 1,500 cups, with stone
channels between them reaching a depth of one and a
half metres, which were used to store rainwater.</p>
<p>
Salah said there were popular but unproven stories
that, in the past, the storage tanks were used as
prisons and to store weapons.</p>
</div>
<p>He said that items discovered so far on Mount Al-Urma
date back to the Bronze, Roman, Byzantine and Islamic
period, up until Ottoman times.</p>
<div>
<p>"Excavation at the site has not been completed yet,
and many of the ruins are still not visible nor
discovered, but we expect there will be many buried
monuments," Salah added.</p>
<p>
He said that excavations were carried out in the
area at the beginning of the 1960s, but there was no
evidence of Jewish monuments that the settlers are
seeking to find.</p>
<p>
"The Israeli search renewed around Mount Al-Urma in
2018 after expansion of the nearby settlement of
Itamar and attempts to link the mountain to the
Israeli Prophet Nun's compound," said Salah.</p>
</div>
<h3>No settlements in Beita</h3>
<div>
<p>Beita, with a population of 13,000 people, is
spread over 23,000 dunums, most of which are
classified according to the Oslo Accords as Areas B,
where the Palestinian Authority has civilian rule
but security remains controlled by Israel.</p>
<p>
Despite the continuous attempts to confiscate
Beita's lands, the town is completely devoid of
settlement expansion as the town's citizens have
repeatedly succeeded in repelling the settlers.</p>
<p>
"We have a stubborn insistence that we will defend
our land and we will not allow it to be a settlement
centre," Fouad Ma'ale, the mayor of Beita, told MEE.</p>
<p>
"The Itamar settlement on the land of the village of
Awarta is adjacent to a house from the northern side
and its settlers are carrying out continuous attacks
on farmers and olive trees. However, it [the
settlement] did not expand on the town's lands.</p>
<p>
“Mount Al-Urma is the highest mountain in the
southern part of Nablus, rising 840 metres above sea
level.</p>
<p>
"It overlooks the villages of Beita, Aqraba, Osrin,
Awarta, Odla, as well as Jordan to the east and the
Mediterranean coast to the west.</p>
<p>
"The settlers and the Israeli army are trying to
take control this mountain because of its important
strategic position," continued Ma'ale.</p>
</div>
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<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
Freedom Archives
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