Israel 'Must Divide' Ancient West Bank Village

By Tom Rayner, Middle East News Editor, Jerusalem

Israel's Defence Ministry has told a court that it has "no alternative" but to extend its controversial separation barrier through a potential world heritage site.

At a hearing at Israel's Supreme Court in Jerusalem, lawyers for the Ministry said it had made all the security concessions possible, but it remained necessary for the barrier to divide the land of the ancient West Bank village of Battir.

Battir, which straddles a valley in the Bethlehem hills, just miles from Jerusalem, is famed for its unique terraced hills which have been built by hand over millennia.

The fertile lands of the Palestinian village are filled with vegetables, fruit crops and olive groves, all fed by natural spring water which flows through Roman irrigation systems, built more than 2,000 years ago.

A Palestinian farmer irrigates her land in the West Bank village of Battir

However, plans put forward by Israel's Defence Ministry to extend the separation barrier - which in some areas nearby is an eight-metre-high concrete wall - would divide the village off from around 35% of its ancestral land.

The area under threat lies on the opposite side of the valley, across the 1949 armistice line which separates Israel from the West Bank, known as the "green line".

Residents of Battir were guaranteed continued access to the land by the Israeli state after the 1948 war, in return for a pledge that the railway which runs along the line would not be vandalised.

The creation of the wall along the proposed course would end that agreement, and cut the land off both from the water that irrigates it, and the residents of Battir who tend to it.

Israel claims the wall is necessary for security, and says it has prevented suicide attacks in the country.

But many in the international community, as well as the Palestinians, see it as a means of appropriating land beyond Israel's pre-1967 borders.

Akram Badir, the head of Battir Village Council, said claims the routing of the wall through Battir was necessary for security were misplaced.

Battir is famed for its unique terraced hills built by hand over millenia

"This village is living in peace. Destroying this site and taking off nearly 40% of the land of Battir means destroying the peace situation as well as the landscape," he said.

Over the last few years, new Israeli settlements, deemed illegal under international law, have been constructed on hills overlooking the village.

The construction of the separation barrier is also coming closer.

It is already at the gates of the nearby village of Walaja, which has led to a gathering of momentum in the battle to protect Battir.

But there has been some annoyance among residents of the village that more has not been done by the Palestinian Authority to assist them in their bid to protect the land.

As a member of Unesco, the Palestinian Authority has the ability to make an emergency application to the UN body to grant Battir world heritage site status.

Given that Battir has already been awarded a prize by Unesco identifying it as a place of unique importance, there is thought to be a good chance such an application would be swift and successful.

The barrier would cut the land off from the water that irrigates it

World heritage site status would almost certainly rule out the possibility of Israel's barrier being routed through the village's land.

Yet those involved in the lobbying effort to the Palestinian Authority say the application process has been held back for fear of disrupting peace negotiations with Israel, due to an agreement on withholding approaches to UN agencies.

In the meantime, the village has won support from an unlikely quarter - the Israeli Nature and Parks Authority.

The body has backed the appeal against the Defence Ministry's planned routing of the barrier - the first time one arm of the Israeli state has publicly opposed another on this matter.

At earlier court hearings Israel's Defence Ministry insisted residents of Battir would still be able to access the land through special security gates and that the barrier would take the form of a fence, rather than a wall, but Gidon Bromberg, an Israeli spokesman for Friends of the Earth Middle East, said such a plan risked the cultural and environmental importance of the land.

He said: "This site is so unique that we must protect it, not just for Israelis and Palestinians, but for humankind as a whole. We can meet the legitimate security concerns by alternative means."

Construction of Israel's separation barrier, which Palestinians call the "apartheid wall", began in 2002 in the midst of a wave of suicide bombings inside Israel during the Palestinian uprising known as the Second Intifada.

As of July 2012 Israel had completed construction of 62% of the planned 439-miles of separation barrier, and 85% of the route is beyond the "green line" inside the West Bank.

A final ruling in the case of Battir, and other villages in the Bethlehem area, has been delayed to a later date.

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