Halamish

History

On 16 October 1977, two groups of settlers, one religious, calling itself “Neveh Tzuf” and one secular, called “Neveh Tzelah” with a total of 40 families moved into the abandoned former British Tegart fort building near the Palestinian village Nabi Salih.

The original name of the settlement, Neveh Tzuf, was rejected by the government naming committee, arguing that it might be misleading since the biblical location, Eretz Tzuf, was elsewhere. The naming committee gave the new settlement the official name 'Halamish' instead, and since this was rejected by the settlers, both names are used for the settlement.

Legal status

The international community considers Israeli settlements to violate the Fourth Geneva Convention's prohibition on the transfer of an occupying power's civilian population into occupied territory and are as such illegal under customary international law. Israel disputes that the Fourth Geneva Convention applies to the Palestinian territories as they had not been legally held by a sovereign prior to Israel taking control of them. This view has been rejected by the International Court of Justice and the International Committee of the Red Cross.

According to a Peace Now report of 2006, 33 percent of the land Neveh Tzuf is built on is privately owned, all or most of it by Palestinians. The Supreme Court of Israel had ruled during the time of the village's founding that the land was state land.

Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Upon the first work preparing the land, residents of the nearby Palestinian village Deir Nidham went to the Supreme Court of Israel and claimed ownership of the Havlata Hill, which is now in the centre of Halamish. Based on aerial photos from the turn of the 20th century, showing the disputed land to be barren, and Ottoman Empire land law specifying that land not worked for over ten years becomes state land, the land on that hill was declared state land and freed for settlement constructions. This court ruling became the precedent for future land ownership disputes.

The residents of the nearby Palestinian village of Nabi Salih regularly protest against the takeover of a spring by settlers of Halamish, declared an "antiquities site" by the Civil Administration, which is located on private land belonging to inhabitants of Nabi Salih, as well as against being prevented from working the fields around the spring. The protests regularly lead to violent clashes, with Palestinian youths throwing stones and Israeli forces firing on protesters with tear gas, rubber bullets, and water cannons. Since the end of 2009, 64 people (13% of the village's population) has been arrested by Israeli forces. Bassem al-Tamimi, one of the leaders of the protests, who was declared a human rights defender by the European Union and a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, has been arrested twelve times to date. On 24 March 2011 he was arrested and charged with incitement, holding a march without a permit, sending youths to throw stones, and perverting the course of justice. After an 11-month military trial, he was cleared of the central charge of incitement and of perverting the course of justice by an Israeli military court, but found guilty of taking part in illegal demonstrations and of soliciting protesters to throw stones largely based on the testimony of two Palestinian youths aged 14 and 15. After being released on bail on 24 April 2012, he was given a 13-month sentence in May 2012, corresponding to the time he had served in prison while awaiting trial.