Unavoidable Necessity: Lands of Aqraba, Lands of Gitit

The initiative to establish a military outpost which would later become the settlement of Gitit, came from Major General Rehavam Zeevi, in a meeting with Defense Minister Moshe Dayan at the end of August 1971. The proposal to establish a settlement in the Tel Tawil area, later named Tel-Tal, was put in writing after a few days, in early September 1971. The summary of the proposal reads: “The proposed settlement site is located 4 km north of Ma’ale Ephraim. In the first phase, we have 2,400 dunams that are suitable for cultivation. Additional areas for cultivation are in the area.” The document further states that the establishment of the settlement “is possible within one to two years.”

In October 1971, the Ministerial Committee for Settlement decided to include three settlements in the 1972-1973 budget: Kfar Haruv, Morag in the Gaza Strip, and Tel-Tal – including the road to the designated plot of land. Two months later, the Jewish Agency decided to make a change in the route of the line, which they called a “no villages line” in the Tel-Tal area. The change defined the location of the planned new settlement and “with the marking of this line, no more land will be cultivated by Arabs east of the line, but grazing will be allowed,” the summary of the discussion said.

The meeting minutes from the Central Command offices show that the spraying of the Aqraba lands was the result of collaboration between quite a few bodies that acted together in the name of the Israeli effort to seize land for settlement purposes. The summary of the discussion describes the division of labor of spraying the lands between the Operations Division of the Central Command, the Judea and Samaria Regional Headquarters, the Custodian of Abandoned Property, and the Settlement Department of the Jewish Agency. Following a discussion between the participants in the meeting, it was agreed that: “According to the Jewish Agency’s announcement, the spraying efficiency will be questioned if it is not carried out within two to three weeks from today […] The proposed date for spraying: Sunday, April 16, 1972, 10:00 AM “.

After numerous changes and postponements in the plan to establish the Tel Tal settlement in the Jordan Valley, in May 1972 it seemed that the establishment of Tel Tal was finally back on track. On May 14^th, a high-level discussion was held in the office of the Commander-in-Chief of the Central Command, with the aim of “finding a solution and a method for establishing the Nahal outpost in the Tel-Tal area in 1972.” The method of doing so was determined: a temporary outpost will be established as soon as possible, without preparing any special infrastructure and with maximum coordination between all the relevant bodies. After discussing the operational issues – water, electricity, and building a road to the outpost – the question of the land needed for the outpost was also mentioned. In this regard, the Custodian of Abandoned Property had good news: “Mr. Gal-On reported at the meeting that, contrary to his report to the Location Committee, the ‘Bathtab area’ lands are in the hands of the Israel Lands Administration and land cultivation can be planned for it.”

In a frustrating coincidence, on the very same day that the IDF Central Command found the “solution and method” for establishing a Nahal outpost on Aqraba lands, the members of the village council approached the Minister of Agriculture in an attempt to put an end to the ongoing takeover of the village lands. “We, the chairman and members of the Aqraba village council near Nablus, complain about this and turn to you for help. We all hope that our request will be answered with special attention,” the residents wrote. “We ask for your honor to take swift action to prevent the administration from taking over our lands, because the establishment of settlements in our agricultural lands will prevent us from the agricultural crop that is our source of livelihood and the livelihood of our children and families. Preventing us from cultivating our lands means destroying us,” the residents wrote.

The French journalist Victor Cygielman of the Nouvel Observatour newspaper heard about what happened on the lands of Aqraba from Palestinian friends. On July 3, 1972 he published a short article about it in the French weekly. Following this, the Israeli newspaper “Maariv” also reported to its readers about the affair of spraying the village lands. The newspaper’s correspondent in Paris added that Cygielman claimed that the land was sprayed with the aim of taking over the land and settling new immigrants in it, but quoted “knowledgeable sources” who denied it.

Just before the establishment of the Nahal Gitit military outpost on its temporary location, Minister Israel Galili contacted Prime Minister Golda Meir, to update her on the inspections carried out in recent days regarding the status of the land in the area. Following the inspection, it was determined that the new settlers would receive land for cultivation in the Petza’el area, but no cultivation of areas in the “bathtab” area would take place yet, in order to “complete and verify the arrangements that have been reached regarding this area.” The nature of these arrangements was not explicitly stated in the letter, it may refer to actions called “land concentration” – an effort to persuade Palestinian residents in the area to exchange their plots with plots of absentees who had left the West Bank, so that Israel could take over these lands, or other attempts to reach agreements with local residents that would mean relinquishing their lands.

Together with the attempts to seize and purchase the village lands, extraordinary efforts were made to formulate a series of benefits, through which Israel hoped to entice the inhabitants of Aqraba to give up their lands. In order to formulate these benefits, a special committee was appointed in October 1972 with the task of “examining possible ways of providing benefits to the village of Aqraba in exchange for a waiver of 1,800 dunams out of a total area of ​​5,000 dunams belonging to the village and currently not cultivated.” The committee’s report details a long list of issues in which the army thought it would be possible to incentivize the arrangement for the residents of Aqraba. The list included: construction of a playground, a fence for the village’s new school for girls, building a kindergarten for children, establishment of a new health clinic, renovation of the mosque, supply of drinking water and the connection of the village to the Israeli electricity grid, tarring a parking lot in the village and paving internal roads, providing agricultural tools and machinery for the purpose of improving agricultural cultivation, improvement and fertilization of the soil, providing agricultural guidance, and of course – payment of compensation for the crop that was sprayed and destroyed. In addition, the committee members suggested using what they called “personal care”: “It is proposed to negotiate with influential people in the village who are the main points of opposition to the implementation of the above project. After locating the influential people within the clans, it is proposed to act by providing special personal benefits such as family reunification and various economic benefits”.

Invitation to celebrate 3 years to Gitit