Crossing Over the Land – portraits and interviews from Palestine is an exhibition and project composed of photographs and interviews made in Palestine by Wiggins.

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Political Tour with Samer Kokaly
I went on a tour with Samer Kokaly of the Alternative Tourism Group. The Alternative Tourism Group is located in Beit Sahour and they specialize in tours that look at the history, culture and politics of Palestine and it’s complex relationship with Israel. We started the tour at the Shepherds Field in Beit Sahour. We talked about the ongoing problems of the occupation and of land confiscation.  Samer showed us the Israeli settlement of Har Homa and explained the particularly difficult situation for the nearby village of An-Nu’man. Here are some excerpts from the tour.

Samer:
“Today I will be talking about some of the Palestinian lands that have been confiscated. The land that you see before you is all part of the West Bank. This land lies within the eastern side of the Green Line that was drawn in 1948 to establish the ceasefire line at the end of the war. This land was then occupied by the Israelis in 1967, as was all of the West Bank.

If you look straight ahead at the mountain you see the Israeli settlement that has been built on top of the mountain, they call this settlement Har Homa. This land originally belonged to Bethlehem and Bait Sahour. This is an illegal settlement according to the United Nations and international law.

This land, actually the whole mountain, was confiscated and annexed within the Jerusalem Municipal Boundary just three months after the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993. At the Oslo Convention the Israeli government signed an agreement that stated that they would not confiscate any more land inside the Green Line, but they confiscated this land and other lands as well since that agreement. In 1996 they cut all the trees down, and in 1997 they started building the settlement.

Near the top of the mountain there is a Palestinian village called An-Nu’man. The situation for the village of An-Nu'man is even more difficult than in other places in the West Bank. When the Israeli’s confiscated this land they surrounded the entire mountain and the village of An-Nu’man with a security fence and a road.  According to Israeli law
the people in An-Nu’man now live in Israel.

There are many restrictions on the people of An-Nu’man that have made it impossible for the villagers to lead a normal life. The villagers have to cross an Israeli checkpoint to go in and out of their village. Nobody is allowed to go into this village except the residents of the village itself. This is an agricultural village and there are restrictions on bringing in livestock and farm machinery. These restrictions have paralyzed the village economically and socially. There were about 1000 people in the village before the confiscation, now there are less than 200.

The people in An’Numan live in Israel but they are not allowed to enter Israel, they are only allowed in the West Bank and they have to cross the Israeli checkpoint to do this. Palestinians are required by the Israeli’s to carry a green ID card in the West Bank. To enter Israel Palestinians must carry a blue Israeli ID card or get a special permit. The people of An-Nu’man have green ID cards. They were not given a blue Israeli ID card or a special permit. This means that they are living illegally in their own hometown and that they cannot enter Israel.

By the way, Nu’man is the name for a flower - the red poppy.

I remember this mountain from when I was a kid in Beit Sahour. We did not have parks so we spent all of our free time in the mountains.

The Israeli’s are expanding everywhere. To expand the settlement of Har Homa they have surrounded the whole village of An-Nu’man. They are putting constant pressure on the people of the village. One day they will be kicked out because they are illegal according to Israeli law. They don’t have a permit to live on their own land even when they have been living there for many generations. But as I said there is no justice.”