OCCUPATION INC

least 50 percent of the parcel within the prior three years or the land reverts to the state
without compensation to the owners. 203
Yousef Mohamad Wanni, a farmer from the village of Marda, told Human Rights Watch that
his father owned more than 1,000 dunams (100 hectare), but he lost almost all of it over
the years to Ariel. 204 “They took it little by little,” Wanni said.
In the beginning [in 1978 and 1979], they took 100 dunams and put
caravans there. In the 1980s, they put a barbed wire fence around more
land; they didn’t confiscate the land, but declared it a closed military zone.
Then they started building on it. Each time they would move the fence [to
encompass more land], they would say it’s for security reasons.
According to Wanni, each time Israel confiscated more land from his father, he would file a
complaint at the local Israeli military court, producing all of the required evidence of
ownership, yet he lost each of the cases. Only 60 dunams remain, 30 of which are behind
the separation barrier built in 2004, and which he may access only twice a year, he said.
Human Rights Watch spoke to Suleiman Shamlawi, from the nearby village of Haris, who
said his family owned 215 dunams (22 hectares) of land on which large parts of Barkan
industrial zone, which is adjacent to Ariel, were established. 205 According to Suleiman,
there were several houses on his family’s land as well as a stone quarry that his family
operated before the Israeli military confiscated the land in 1981. Israel declared the land
state land on February 2, 1981, claiming it had conducted an investigation and determined
the land was not privately owned. 206 Suleiman, like most Palestinian landowners in that
area, had not formally registered his title before 1967, although he has tax records that
were recognized as proof of ownership by Jordanian authorities at that time. After a
protracted court battle, during which Israel approved and subsidized the construction of
factories on the land, Israel’s Supreme Court held that Suleiman had sufficiently proved
203 Ibid., p. 37.
204 Human Rights Watch interview with Younis Mohamad Wanni, Marda, March 29, 2015
205 Human Rights Watch interviews with Suleiman Shamlawi, Haris, December 20, 2014.
206 Suleiman Shamlawi v. Appeals Committee, Israel Supreme Court of Justice, Case No. 484/85, November 21, 1985.
75 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH | JANUARY 2016