The struggle of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank for the lands stolen from them is an exhausting battle on multiple fronts. “The theft of land is carried out through the use of falsified documents, corruption of lawyers, and manipulation of young orphaned settlers,” says Alice Kisiya, a Palestinian from Beit Jala.
After nearly twenty years of effort by the Israeli government, non-governmental organizations and settler groups to demolish the family’s property and evict them, the Kisiyas regained access to their ancestral land following an Israeli court ruling in their favor, rejecting the settlers’ ownership documents as “fabricated”.
Alice Kisiya spoke with Nelson Pereira on the occasion of the screening in Geneva of Yanis Mhamdi’s documentary, “Alice in Settlerland”, during the International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights.
Alice denounces Israeli organizations that aim to expand settlements at all costs. Organizations that do not hesitate to take advantage of teenagers placed to live without parents in illegal outposts on hilltops. Subjected to intense anti-Palestinian and extremist religious indoctrination, these “hilltop youth” spend their days idle, abandoned to alcohol and drug abuse. Easily manipulated, they are ideal pawns in the hands of organizations like Himanuta, a Jewish National Fund Subsidiary, and Regavim, a pro-settler NGO that pursues legal actions against Palestinians building in Israel and the West Bank.
Aged between 16 and 26, they left their schools and education to live in settlement outposts erected on the hilltops, rampaging through Palestinian communities and carrying out killings and mass arson.
“They are kids at risk without parental care, abused by settler organizations like Himanuta or Regavim. Behind a facade of volunteering hours in agricultural schools, the Hilltop Youth is a militia used to take over Palestinians’ lands,” Alice explains. “It looks like a shelter, but the goal is to create very violent kids by brainwashing them and telling them that Arabs are terrorists. They use those kids as a tool to reach a political goal, they don’t really care about them.”
The Kisiya family are Palestinian Christians who have lived and farmed for generations in the Al-Makhrour valley, a UNESCO-listed area near Bethlehem.
The family’s property in Al-Makhrour, including their home and a restaurant, has been demolished multiple times by Israeli authorities, with major demolitions occurring in 2013, 2015, and 2019, under the premise of lack of building permits.
With Israel carrying out a devastating war on Gaza, the settlers exploited the lack of global attention on the occupied West Bank to steal large swaths of Palestinian land with little international pushback or outcry.
Utilizing forged documents, settler organizations intended to absorb the property into the illegal Gush Etzion settlement bloc, a move aimed at enhancing Israeli control over the area and separating Bethlehem from Jerusalem.
“Himanuta forged documents pretending they were found in the archives from the Jordanian ruling. However, we gained access to the archives and proved that those files did not exist,” tells Alice Kisiya. “Furthermore, they attempted to manipulate, bribe, and threaten the lawyers who represented us. So we exposed them, and proved that we have rights to the land. And we are now continuing the legal battle with the civil administration.”
“It wasn’t easy,” she adds, “but at the end we managed to get them out. And I filed a complaint against Himanuta with an Israeli anti-corruption body for falsifying documents.”
“We have been fighting for our land for decades and we are not leaving,” stresses Alice. “Palestinians Christians and Muslims, we are united against land theft and occupation.”
Nelson Pereira
