By Jorge Dastis
Nuaman, Aug. 29 (EFE).- The village of Nuaman, caught between the borders of Jerusalem and Bethlehem and whose inhabitants are neither Israeli nor Palestinian, is currently facing the greatest challenge in its history, as Israel, after decades of fighting for its rights to be recognized, wants to demolish its homes.
“We have realized that Zionist racism wants to take all our land,” said Yamal Darawi, the head of the village council, during a recent visit for the international press organized by the Israeli NGO Ir Amim.
Nuaman is little more than a row of old houses, some of which were built over six decades ago.
Although there is a small mosque, the enclave lacks schools, grocery stores, and other infrastructure.
Yet, Nuaman is much better preserved than most Palestinian villages facing expulsion; its houses are large and well-built, and most residents are middle-class.
Darawi explains that diplomats and NGOs from around the world have tried to intercede with the Israeli authorities on their behalf, but no one has been able to help.
Their problems date back to 1967, when Israel incorporated the village of Nuaman into its municipal boundaries after conquering East Jerusalem but registered its residents as West Bank citizens.
This decision brought little change to the inhabitants’ lives until the 1990s, when Israel classified Nuaman’s neighbors as “illegal residents” under the Oslo Accords, preventing them from building.
“After the Oslo Accords, some residents thought there would finally be peace and the area would become part of Palestine under the control of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA),” said Darawi.
Instead, Israeli authorities entered the village and demolished some homes, informing residents that they did not have permission to build.
They realized then that their small village was part of Israel’s new borders and not the West Bank as they had thought.
The authorities then prevented Nuaman’s inhabitants from crossing into the rest of Jerusalem without a special permit and prohibited them from accessing the city’s municipal services, even though the enclave is technically within the municipal area’s boundaries.
When the separation wall was constructed in 2003, the village was cut off from the rest of the West Bank. Its residents had to cross military checkpoints to go shopping, to work, or to school.
Darawi listed the names of all the Israeli lawyers they had hired to address an endless succession of problems, such as nighttime arrests of residents, restrictions on entering or leaving the village, and limits on the amount of food they can bring through the checkpoints.
Their main demands are that Nuaman residents be recognized as citizens of East Jerusalem with the right to travel within Israel or that the village be definitively incorporated into the West Bank, which would require tearing down the part of the separation wall that isolates them from it.
In 2019, the municipal authorities demanded that Nuaman residents pay housing taxes retroactively, even though the village does not receive public services.
In January, the authorities issued demolition orders for all the houses in the village.
“We expect the demolitions to take place at any moment,” said Darawi.
In the distance, a few meters away, stands the Israeli settlement of Har Homa, which was built to block the expansion of the nearby Palestinian city of Bethlehem and is considered illegal under international law.
Plans to expand the settlement threaten to wipe Nuaman off the map entirely. EFE
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