Report: Sixty-eight Palestinians imprisoned in their village

Wednesday October 24, 2007 04:57 by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC

The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Palestinian Occupied Territories, B'tselem, issued a report Tuesday documenting the case of sixty-eight Palestinians, including twenty-six children, who are imprisoned in Tel 'Adasa village in East Jerusalem.

Israeli forces have constructed the Annexation wall along the village, separating the villagers from the town of Bir Nebala, where many of the adults are employed and all the children attend school.

According to B'tselem, the village of Tel 'Adasa lies on land annexed by Israel in 1967, near the ‘Atarot industrial area and Begin Road. West of this road, on which Palestinians are forbidden to travel, Israel built a section of the Separation Barrier, which separates the residents of Tel ‘Adasa from the adjacent town, Bir Nebala, which lies outside Jerusalem 's municipal borders.

So the 68 residents of Tel 'Adasa are considered by Israel to be illegally inside Jerusalem, despite the fact that they have lived in the village their entire lives. Israel requires any Palestinian who wishes to enter Jerusalem to apply for a permit from Israeli authorities several weeks in advance. These permits are rarely granted.

Since the Separation Barrier was built, residents of Tel ‘Adasa have been able to get to and from Bir Nebala through one passageway that the authorities left open in the barrier. Border Police are posted at the opening, which the residents could pass through without a permit. The opening also was their only way to get to Ramallah and the rest of the West Bank, since crossing through the nearby Qalandiya Checkpoint, on their way home from Ramallah and from elsewhere in the West Bank toward Jerusalem, requires Israeli identity cards, or a permit to enter Israel, which, as mentioned above, Israel does not grant to residents of Tel ‘Adasa.

According to the B'tselem report, on the 12th of September, without any prior warning, security forces blocked the opening, thereby detaching the residents from the rest of the West Bank , and from Bir Nebala in particular. This meant that the children could not get to school.

On the 23rd of September, after having not gone to school for ten days, the residents decided to send their children to school, via Qalandiya Checkpoint.

The parents were concerned the children would not be allowed to cross the checkpoint on their way home after school.

Upon learning that day of the closure of the passageway in the barrier, B'Tselem immediately called the Civil Administration's Humanitarian Hotline, which authorized the children to cross. However, the authorization was received late in the afternoon, near the breaking of the daily fast of Ramadan, and there weren't any vehicles to drive them home from the checkpoint. The children and the persons accompanying them spent the night in the street, in the commercial area of Bir Nebala. The next morning, 24 September, B'Tselem coordinated arrangements between the children and their escorts at the checkpoint with the Hotline, and they were able to get home. Since then, to get home each day, the children have had to rely on B'Tselem coordinating the matter with the Civil Administration.

jerusalem | the wall | news report saed at imemc dot org