Um al-Kheir is a small Bedouin village south of Hebron. I visited with a local activist as part of a short project on home demolitions.
The propinquity is quite intense. They really live a stone's throw from the fence that separates them from the settlement, and the differences are stark. What’s more, they get hassled if they get too close to the fence, if they build too close to the fence, if sheep wander too close to the fence, and all the rest of it. Especially given that sheep don’t understand no-go zones, it means that the army bothers them every day.
As is the case elsewhere, in Um al-Kheir people are planting trees in a sort of last ditch effort to secure property rights. They have 20 dunums in the back of the community, right up against the settlement, that is planted with almonds and olives. There is also a soccer field and a water tank. The trees are a year and a half old, and people told me they were uprooted the first time by the settlers (or maybe soldiers). They replanted them though, and since then they’ve managed to keep growing.
The ownership of the land in the area doesn’t go back that far. The people of Um al-Kherr originally lived inside of what would become the State of Israel in 1948, and like many Bedouin, they were expelled by force to the southern part of the West Bank. In 1952, they bought the hilltops where they currently reside from owners in Yatta, a nearby city, reportedly for 100 camels. One of the older men explained that in those days, the precise number of dunums was not important, just the general space. He also told me that the people of Um al-Kheir acquired (more?) land gradually, between 1964 and 1967, from four different clans in Yatta. (A surveyor in Hebron told me that this was not correct; instead, all the land had been purchased in 1952).
The Israeli state, probably sometime in the 1980s, declared the land was state land. I don’t know if the settlement was built before or after, but either way, state land secured, either prior to or retroactively, the legal basis. One of the younger men in Um al-Kheir told me that in the 1980s the Municipality (presumably in Hebron) appointed four lawyers, but that they really screwed things up. Other people agreed: these layers basically did nothing, “sold” the case, collected the money, and went on their way. In 2008, a new lawyer from Jerusalem took up the case, and people were more hopeful. They have the ownership papers, they said, and believe that the state should, perhaps might, respect them. At least it might prevent the settlers from coming further in, they thought. Or maybe not.
So, so close.