RAMALLAH, Wednesday, February 03, 2021 (WAFA) – Israeli forces today set up an observation point at the main entrance of Deir Nidham village, northwest of Ramallah, according to local sources.
They said that Israeli forces erected a fixed tent which would function as an observation point at the entrance of the village, which overlooks the bypass Road 465, two weeks after they escorted a bulldozer to the area and razed it.
In early January, the Israeli army sealed off the village purportedly as part of an active pursuit of the perpetrators who hurled stones at a female settler as she was driving past the village entrance and near the Israeli colonial settlement of Neve Tzuf, also known as Halamish, injuring her.
At the time, Israeli forces heavily deployed in and around the village, launching a massive house-to-house search campaign and detaining 20 villagers on suspicion of being involved in the attack and assaulting others.
Located 14 kilometers to the northwest of Ramallah city, Deit Nidham, also written as Deit Nizzam, has a population of some 1,000 and occupies a total area of 2,758 dunams.
Under the Oslo Accords, an agreement made 25 years ago that was supposed to last just five years towards a self-governing country alongside Israel, the Palestinian Authority was given limited control over a very small pocket of 130 donums, classified as Area B and accounting for 4.7 percent of the village land. In contrast, Israel maintains control over the remainder, classified as Area C.
Israel has seized at least 22 percent of the village’s land for the construction of the nearby colonial settlement of Neve Tzuf. It has confiscated more land for the construction of settler-only by-pass Road 465, which extends 7.4 kilometers on the village’s land, which connects the settlements with one another and encloses the village from four directions.
Such Israeli measures, taken under the guise of security, are intended to entrench Israel’s 53-year-old military occupation of the West Bank and its settler colonial project which it enforces with routine and frequently deadly violence against Palestinians.
K.F.
