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Let’s speak briefly about the village of Beit Ur al-Fauqa, where the family of rep @RashidaTlaib comes from. Take a good look at the attached map, it’s important in order to understand what we will talk about in the coming minutes.

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Beit Ur al-Fauqa - namely “Upper Beit Ur” is a relatively small Palestinian village which grew out of Beit Ur al-Tahta (“lower Beit Ur”) a bigger village which is about 2 km farther west. In the 2007 census less than 1,000 inhabitants were counted in the village.

The village is located approximately 9 km west from Ramallah and 7 km east of the Green Line. According to the ownership survey which was conducted by the British authorities of Palestine, the villages land included 943 acres.

Let’s start from the end: As a result of the Oslo B Agreement (1995) 101 acres were defined as Area B.

Add to it another 3.5 acres which are included within a master plan that was approved by the Israeli authorities and you get 104.5 acres which are available for Palestinian construction. That makes 11% of the total villages’ land.

Luckily for the inhabitants of Beit Ur al-Fauqa, their village land was fully registered before June 67 Israeli occupation and only 2 land parcels in the entire village land were registered as Jordanian state land in the Tabu (the general land registry).

This accidental anecdote saved big parts of the village land from the destiny of the neighboring villages: Beitunia and At-Tira, which big parts of their lands were declared by the Israeli authorities as “state land” and automatically allocated to Israeli settlements.

Back to the map: In the eastern edge of Beit Ur al-Fauqa land there is 1 of the 2 parcels which were registered as Jordanian state land. This parcel was (of course) taken by the Israeli authorities and allocated to the settlement of Beit Horon (established in 1977).

But the real story of Beit Ur al-Fauqa is not the settlement, but the 443 Bypass, which was paved in the early 1990’s in order to connect North Jerusalem and the adjacent settlements to the coastal area of Israel.

In order to pave this road, The IDF had confiscated in the late 1980’s, 50 acres of the village’s land. Once receiving the orders the owners from Beit Ur al-Fauqa and the neighboring villages appealed to the Israeli HCJ (High Court of Justice) in order to stop the confiscation.

Eventually the HCJ dismissed the petition and accepted the IDF claim that the road will be used also by the “local population” – namely the Palestinians, who will be able to drive on it faster and more securely. Remember this point, we will get back to it.

The road had been paved and as a result about 425 acres of cultivated and grazing land of the Beit Ur al-Fauqa, were practically disconnected from the village, remaining southwest of the 443 Bypass route.

What about an access road to these 425 acres? A tunnel under the road? You must be kidding! Not in the West Bank! Once the road was constructed the villagers were forced to do a 7-8 km detour in order to reach their land. No wonder that always fewer bother to do so.

Let’s go back for a sec to 1979: in this year the IDF issued a confiscation order for 545 acres (only a few acres were confiscated from Beit Ur al-Fauqa) for a road which was supposed to be paved north of Beit Ur al-Fauqa.

Luckily for the villagers this road wasn’t paved. In 1996 the IDF issued “construction ban order 1/96”. This order prevents construction along roads in the West Bank, including the 2 roads: 443 to the south of the village and the one which wasn’t paved north of it.

So about 113 acres of the village’s land were included in the “construction ban order”. Let’s jump to the 2nd Intifada: We are in the end of year 2000 and Palestinians were banned sporadically by the IDF from using the road, until there was a final ban in 2002.

So what do you do now with the IDF official commitment to the HCJ (from the late 1980’s) that “the road will be used also by Palestinians?” For this, there are “temporary Seizure Orders”. In 2005-6 The IDF issued 2 seizure orders for the sake of paving “Fabric of Life” roads.

So, 30 more acres were seized “temporarily” in order to pave the 2 “Fabric of Life” roads, which serve as the Palestinian Bypass roads for the original Bypass 443 which was paved on land which was confiscated from Beit Ur al-Fauqa inhabitants. Makes perfectly sense. Ah?

Frankly Beit Ur al-Fauqa is far from being a village which suffers the worst from Israel’s occupation and Israel’s settlements related land grab machine. It’s just “another village” in this sense.
So Rashida, come and visit when you have a chance. We will be here.
يعطيكي العاقيه!