Update December 1, 2003

This article appeared the Israeli Ha’aretz Newspaper

“They can’t see the hilltop for the trees” by Ira Moskowitz.

Daoud Nassar and Shaul Goldstein both speak eloquently about the need for coexistence and understanding between Jews and Arabs. But both are also adamant about their rival claims to a tranquil hill bordering the Neve Daniel settlement in the Gush Etzion region of the West Bank, just south of Jerusalem.

Nassar, 32, is one of nine children who share a claim to a 100-acre plot of land that has been the subject of legal proceedings for over a decade. While Israel recognizes the family's property rights to some of this land, about half of the parcel was declared "state land" in 1991. The family submitted an appeal to the "objections committee" of the military court that adjudicates such disputes in the territories. This appeal was succinctly rejected in 2002, despite the witnesses brought by the family to testify that the Nassars have cultivated the land for decades. On July 9, the High Court of Justice reviewed the case and sent it back to the military court, ordering it to explain its decision. The military court delivered the requested documentation in late September and the Nassar family's attorneys submitted a response last month. The next step will be to set a new date for a High Court hearing, probably in early 2004.

Goldstein, 44, is the head of the Gush Etzion regional council. He views the Nassars' claim as another last-ditch attempt by Arabs to stymie the Jewish settlement effort. In his view, the land in question has definitively been declared state land and can be developed at the council's discretion. As the court saga continued this summer, Goldstein inaugurated a new neighborhood overlooking the contested land in his Neve Daniel settlement, which is home to over 200 families.

Daoud Nassar says his grandfather, a Christian from Lebanon, purchased the land in 1916, and he presents copies of land registration documents from the 1920s that bear the official stamp of the Israeli civil administration. His father and uncles grew up on the land, sleeping in a cave and cultivating figs, olives and grapes. When his grandmother's health began to fail in the 1950s, the family moved to Bethlehem, but his father would come every day to farm the land. One unmarried uncle stayed continuously on the land until he died in 1987 at the age of 93. Nassar fondly recalls growing up with this land as part of his natural environment and says he would not think of selling it.

Until recently, there has not been any friction between the Nassars and their Jewish neighbors. (Besides Neve Daniel to the east, Kfar Etzion - a community that predates the State of Israel - is located to the south, and the Betar Illit settlement is several kilometers to the west.) Earlier this year, however, settlers began plowing a road up a hillside that the Nassars claim as part of their property.

Lawyer vs. bulldozer

Nassar's attorney, Jonathan Kuttab, describes the confrontation over the road during a conversation in his East Jerusalem office, overlooking the gardens of the American Colony Hotel: "I remember it was on election day [January 28]. We went there - George [Daoud's brother], a surveyor, myself and another lawyer, and two clergymen. The road they were digging was clearly on the non-disputed part of the Nassars' property. We tried talking to the guy operating the bulldozer and to someone who was there with a gun, but they didn't want to listen. We then called the police, but they wouldn't come. So I decided to do a bit of nonviolent protest. I used to do this a lot during the first intifada."

At this point, Kuttab gets up from his chair to act out the drama: "I stood in front of the bulldozer and didn't move. He dug to my right and then to my left, I lost my footing, but remained on the ground in front of the bulldozer. Finally, he gave up trying to get past me, telling me, `You're lucky I still have a conscience.' Then they called the police and this time the police came."

Goldstein is fully convinced that the road did not infringe on the Nassar property, but was being carved up the hillside in the area that had been declared state land. He points on a map to an easier route they could have chosen for the road, but says they decided to take a more circuitous route precisely in order to avoid having to cut through the Nassars' land. In the interests of avoiding a confrontation, the settlers decided of their own accord to stop the road project "until the matter is clarified," he adds.

Daoud Nassar confirms that no further work has been done on the road project, but charges that the settlers vented their anger by uprooting some 250 trees from his property.

Goldstein says he has no knowledge of any such incident and emphasizes that he has zero toleration for acts of harassment against Arab farmers. "If I see someone touching a fig, I tell them to stop and to come take a fig from my garden instead."

In principle, Goldstein says, he has no problem with individual Arab farmers who have legitimate claims to land. "What's ours is ours, and what's theirs is theirs. There's only a problem when it comes to nation against nation," he says. "We're no less stubborn than them," he adds, noting that his father fought in this area in the 1948 War of Independence and that he is continuing this fight. He explains that the area where Neve Daniel was established in 1982 was part of the Cohen Farm purchased by a Jewish family in the early 1900s and sold to the Jewish National Fund in 1935.

Goldstein, a mechanical engineer and Israel Air Force veteran, has served as head of the regional council for about four years. He also grows nectarines and cherries on Neve Daniel and emphasizes that his plot of land is "entirely on Jewish land." Prior to his position at the regional council, he operated a contracting business for about 10 years and says he got to know many Arabs in the area through this work.

According to Goldstein, the actions of some peace activists and reporters have served to inflame tensions and undermine the efforts to build coexistence with his Arab neighbors. He was annoyed, for example, that some peace activists came to plant olive trees with the Nassars on a plot he regards as state land that is under the jurisdiction of the Gush Etzion regional council.

Tent of Nations

Daoud Nassar, who studied business and tourism management, and organizes youth exchange programs, has formed the Tent of Nations organization, supported by groups in Switzerland and Germany, where he did some of his studies. His vision is to bring groups of people from different nations for dialogue sessions under the trees on his family's hilltop.

In particular, Nassar speaks passionately about the need for Israelis and Palestinians to learn more about each other. He recalls seeing how Israeli and Palestinian youth who met in dialogue encounters in Germany were shocked to learn basic information about each other - that Israelis eat falafel and hummus, for example, or that Palestinians have computers and e-mail accounts.

But Nassar is a bit guarded when asked whether he would be interested in conducting a dialogue with his neighbors from Neve Daniel. "If they want to meet us as people, to see the place where we're living and to hear our story, why not?" he says. "Everyone is welcome here, this is our ideal, our philosophy. It's not just for a show. We need people who really want to understand each other."

Goldstein also has no objection to meeting with Nassar, as long as the meeting is not staged as a media event. "No problem," he says and tells the story of how a neighboring Arab farmer came to his office to complain about damage done to his field. After confirming that the report was correct, the council made sure that the damage was immediately repaired, Goldstein says.

Kuttab, who earned his law degree at the University of Virginia and practiced on Wall Street for several years before opening his law office in Jerusalem in 1980, is not particularly hopeful about the outcome of Nassar's court battle. "Who knows?" he shrugs and launches into a bitter description of the "legal sophistry and trickery" Israel uses to take over land in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

For example, Kuttab explains, Israel can declare as state land any agricultural land in the West Bank and Gaza that has not been under continual cultivation for 10 years. And, indeed, Goldstein dismisses Nassar's claim to the contested land by citing aerial photographs showing that the land was not being cultivated.

But even if the Nassar family's land is state or public land - which it isn't, Kuttab insists - "Why is public land only allocated to Jews?" he asks. The answer, he explains, is that Israel is defined as a Jewish state and that this translates into equating the public interest with Jewish interests.

Goldstein makes no apologies about this: "Indeed, the State of Israel is the state of the Jews and, therefore, its lands are earmarked first and foremost for its Jewish citizens. Any effort to change this is in league with [Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser] Arafat's design for a state of all its citizens."

Basically, there is nothing unique about Nassar's case, Kuttab concludes. The High Court will have to decide whether Israel's public relations interests take priority over its appetite for land. In most cases, the court prefers not to overrule the decision of the military courts, he notes.

But the Nassar family is a bit unusual, Kuttab adds, in that "they have this crazy idea that maybe they can get justice."

As Daoud Nassar says: "Living in this country, you are not allowed to give up hope."

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