Paradise lost: How Israel is making war on West Bank farmers

Amal Slaibi, 58, averts her eyes whenever she passes the remains of her family’s small but profitable orchard in the occupied West Bank, which she has managed since her father became too old to tend to the crops 25-years-ago. Amal has fond memories of growing up among the grapevines and peach trees of the farm in Beit Ummar , north of Hebron. The fruits provided the family with a generous source of income, while the leaves cast a pleasant shade over the land. That was until 1984, when the illegal Israeli settlement of Karmei Tzur was built, the iron fence demarcating the outpost eating into the Slaibis’ land. Last November, Israeli bulldozers arrived at the village, uprooting their grapevines. Their seven-dunam orchard and about 30 dunams of land belonging to Slaibi’s uncle were levelled by the Israeli military. Soldiers ordered the family not to come within 500 metres (546 yards) of their grapevines, claiming the land lies too close to the illegal Karmei Tzur settlement, despite her family having owned the land for generations. “They prevented us from even passing near it, then they bulldozed it all … They left us with nothing to live on,” Slaibi told Al Jazeera. Lost land The harvest, in May and June, used to provide the Slaibi family of 12 with at least 10,000 shekels (approximately $3,300), a modest but adequate sum. …