Product Code Database
Nuaman or Khallet an Nu'man (, meaning "Grace"), also written al-Numan/an-Nu'man, is a small village located just north of Beit Sahour in the Palestinian Governorate of Bethlehem. The Israeli government incorporated its territory within Jerusalem after the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in the 1967 Six-Day War. The village is regarded as neither part of the West Bank, nor part of Jerusalem. A United Nations report has described the villagers as "living in limbo." In terms of local government it is treated together with the neighbouring village Al-Khas, to the west, as one unit. The village had a population of 112 in 2017. Settled by families from the at-Ta'mira Bedouin tribe, it is part of the 'Arab al-Ta'mira village cluster, along with Za'atara, Beit Ta'mir, Hindaza, Tuqu', Khirbet ad-Deir (today part of Tuqu'), Ubeidiya and al-Asakra.
The hamlet's name is an eponym, taken from that of the traveler, Nu'man Ben Bisher, who resided there, and its history of habitation goes back at least to 1900. Palestinians began to develop the hamlet of Nuaman on a windy plateau between Jerusalem and Bethlehem in the 1930s during the period of the British Mandatory Government of Palestine. Two families, Bedouin of the Ta'amreh tribe,. On the Ta'amreh, see . moved there, the Shawarwa and Darawi, fashioning dwellings from hollowed-out caves initially, and then moving into tents, and finally stone houses. The area was planted with pine breaks, cypress groves, lemon and olive orchards, and vegetable plots, and, in addition they maintained a pastoral economy of grazing sheep. It lies at an altitude of 576 m above sea level and has a mean annual rainfall of 356 mm. Together with Al-Khas, Nuaman lies on 1,474 of land, of which 1,294 are arable, though not particularly fertile, and 31 residential. Title to extensive parts of the Nuaman territory is held by families in Beit Sahour and Sur Baher.
The anomalous registration has meant that the Jerusalem municipality refuses to supply Nuaman with water, sewage and garbage collecting systems, and denies the inhabitants permits to build houses by denying them a zoning and residential development plan. Garbage trucks are denied entrance. The water pipes to the village from the Palestinian Authority were frequently broken by Israeli bulldozing from 1998 through to 2003, however, it being presumed because in that regard the village was treated as though it were part of the Jerusalem municipality. Bulldozing work on the Separation Wall in May 2006 again uprooted the water mains connections and tore down the only electricity pylon serving the village. The Israeli High Court of Justice, hearing an appeal by the villagers gave the Israeli Ministry of the Interior and the Jerusalem Municipal Council 2 months to resolve the status of the village, as either part of the West Bank or of Jerusalem. No decision either way has ever been forthcoming, and the indeterminacy of their status leaves them in a legal limbo. Family members, mothers, grandmothers and children separated by a few hundred metres cannot visit each other in Nuaman if they lack the proper village ID. Couples who married are prohibited from building a proper home, so no new families can be established, and of 13 expected to marry in 2006, 2 were constrained to build elsewhere, in al-Khas
Some of the infrastructural services they were refused by the Jerusalem authorities were met subsequently by the initiative of the Palestinian Authority. Young Nuaman women considering marriage find that their suitors are turned back by Israeli soldiers stationed at the village entrance. Other Palestinian suitors, from Jerusalem, back off because they would lose their Jerusalem residency rights if they marry a woman from Nuaman.
In December 2005 a labourer from Nuaman, Mahmoud Shawara (43), father of 9 children, living in a roofless structure lacking an Israeli building permit, set out on his mule to look for work in Umm Tuba which is designated as lying within Jerusalem's borders. He was arrested by Israel Border Police engaged in checking for illegal workers ( shabahim) entering into Israel, but refused to be taken away by jeep since it would have meant abandoning his mule. Several hours later, the animal was seen dragging something at a gallop, and an Umm Tuba resident stopped it, and saw that an unconscious Shawara had had his hands roped to the mule, and was in a battered state. He stopped breathing, was revived, and taken to the Hadassah Medical Center and received in the intensive care ward where he died a week later. The cause of his death is unknown, and an Israeli police investigation closed the matter stating it was an accident caused by a fall from the mule. Nuaman residents stated that border police had a practice of tying illegals to their animals. Gideon Levy collected testimonies of several Palestinians regarding the practice, which involves placing a cinder block on the prone labourer, once tethered to an animal and then whipping it to drag the person away.
From 1998 to 2003 Israel repeatedly closed the road linking the village to Bethlehem for periods of up to a month. In April/ May 2006, Israel locked the western entrance to the village, once used by villagers to go on foot to Al-Aqsa for prayers, by mounting a steel gate, and the road to Jerusalem has been partially destroyed by being ploughed over and blocked with dirt mounds. All transit through the village by vehicles other than personal cars is forbidden, including taxis and buses. A military checkpoint guards the other entrance, and no one other than Nuaman residents are permitted passage into the hamlet. Since May 2006, only Nu'man residents with West Bank IDs may enter the village, though even the resident doctor, Dr. Ibrahim Abu-Sitta al-Dir'awi, encounters delays and threats at the checkpoint to deny him entry to his home if he leaves the hamlet, and the new village lawyer, Labib Habib, who has an Israeli ID, is denied entry to consult with the villagers. Even the number of chickens one may carry back to one's home is subject to arbitrary rules, sometimes only one being allowed. An ambulance was refused entry when answering a call for help from the village and the child, bitten by a spider, had to be carried to the checkpoint to reach the ambulance and be taken to hospital.
Ibrahim Darawi imputes to the Israelis an intention to force them to leave, calling it 'a quiet transfer.' The villagers themselves are not permitted to truck in heavy supplies like flour, fodder and gas cylinders but are required by the Israeli military to carry them on foot through the checkpoint to their homes 1.5 kilometers away. The former UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk has endorsed this description, calling the constrictive policies applied to the village an example of "indirect forcible transfer." According to B'Tselem, behind the restrictions on Nuaman lie a government policy which aims to maintain the demographic balance of Jerusalem by encouraging refusing to allow Palestinians to exceed the ceiling of 30% of the city's population, with measures that include forced expulsions. Israeli officials deny there is any wish to expel the villagers. Lt. Col. Shlomo Dror that Nuaman's difficulties will eventually be smoothed out.
Some of them are not legally there, but we are not going to push anyone out. We'll find a solution for this problem. Maybe, one day, the fence will be in another place, or maybe that part of East Jerusalem will be part of the West Bank.
Al-Haq claims that what Israel is doing in Nuaman is in clear violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and International Humanitarian Law, the former prohibiting "individual or mass forcible transfers".
|
|
