Every Friday for nearly a decade, the villagers of Nabi Saleh in the West Bank have gathered to walk across a road to a water spring.
The water spring has long been a part of Palestinian life, but the villagers of Nabi Saleh are prevented from accessing it by illegal Israeli settlers, who take more and more land every year.
The gate at the entrance to the village is constantly monitored by Israeli soldiers. They often exercise their powers to turn back Palestinian villagers trying to get to school or work, or a clinic for medical treatment. Like other checkpoints across the West Bank, Nabi Saleh checkpoints include a battery of CCTV cameras.
The infrastructure of occupation appeared around Nabi Saleh to “contain” Palestinian responses to the establishment of the adjacent Halamish settlement in 2009. Land for that settlement was stolen from Palestine. Roads built on that stolen land are for Israeli settlers only.
As the water spring is now for settlers only, every Friday the soldiers prevent the villagers from walking across their own land to access what was their own water.
Read the full article written by Lisa Gleeson at Green Left.