Summary
A Palestinian village west and northwest of Jerusalem whose village council and landowners are the named petitioners in the Beit Sourik case, HCJ 2056/04, against the separation fence seizure orders (Beit Sourik Village Council v. Government of Israel, lines 302-306).
Details
- The village’s lands are among those attacked by the petition, adjacent to Mevo Choron, Har Adar, Mevasseret Zion and the Jerusalem neighborhoods of Ramot and Giv’at Zeev (paragraph 9).
- The abstract of the judgment (not part of the opinion) says that at Beit Surik, spelled “Beit Surik” there, the barrier fence wraps around the village from the west, north and east (line 113).
- The fence route next to the village was changed during the hearings, and respondent was willing to change the route adjacent to Beit Sourik and Bidu (paragraphs 16, 20).
- Residents of adjacent Mevasseret Zion joined the petition on both sides over the route’s distance from the village and from their own houses and schools (paragraph 22).
- Population given in the judgment as 3,500 (paragraphs 63, 68). On petitioners’ figures, not negated by respondents, 500 dunams of the village’s lands are directly damaged by the obstacle and 6,000 more remain beyond it (5,000 cultivated), including three greenhouses; 10,000 trees are uprooted and inhabitants are cut off from “25,000 thousand olive trees” (as printed), 25,000 fruit trees and 5,400 fig trees (paragraph 68).
- The judgment describes the original route as leaving the village bordered tightly by the obstacle on its west, south and east — “a veritable chokehold, which will severely stifle daily life” — with one seasonal gate south of the village (paragraph 68), and in its overview says the fence surrounds the village from the west, the south and the east and strikes across the fabric of life of the entire population (paragraph 84).
- Order Tav/108/03, covering the segment west and southeast of Beit Sourik and Bidu, was annulled for disproportionality; any new route must free Beit Sourik (and to a lesser extent Bidu) from the chokehold and allow access to the majority of its agricultural lands (paragraph 71 and the result).
Related pages
Beit Sourik Village Council v. Government of Israel, Beit Sourik case, Separation wall