On 15 February 2021, Sa’id Kuk (61), a married father of eight from the village of Turmusaya, discovered that settlers had raked, razed and damaged about 60 dunams (1 dunam = 1,000 square meters) of land he and his family own.
Kuk filed a complaint at the Binyamin Police station on 11 March 2021.
Over the past year, as of April 2020, B’Tselem has documented 18 settler attacks against Turmusaya residents and their property.
In a testimony he gave B'Tselem field researcher Iyad Hadad, Kuk spoke about the settlers’ gradual takeover of his land:
On 15 February 2021, I discovered settlers had raked a large part of my land. They razed the entire plot – probably ahead of the outpost’s expansion and the takeover of our 60 dunams. I contacted the Palestinian DCO to file a complaint and applied to human rights organizations and the ICRC for help, but no one helped me. On 11 March 2021, I filed a complaint with the Israel Police. They registered my complaint but I’m not putting too much stock in it. I have filed complaints before, to no avail.
That’s the way it is – they’re taking over our land. It’s an ongoing ordeal of aggression and unending settlement expansion. The land they took over is the thing that’s dearest to us. They destroyed my dream and my sons’ dream to return to the land for construction or recreation. This situation is why my sons prefer to emigrate and work in the US, because they’ve been left no option to work the land or build on it here. The actions of the settlers limit their hopes and aspirations here.
Whenever the settlers do something more to take over the land, it feels like amputating parts of my body. They sever the memories, my history with the land. We grew up in this land. We lived off it, and spent our childhood and youth there. We have beautiful, sweet memories with our parents and relatives during the harvest. We’d spend weeks and months there, sometimes. They destroyed our way of life and wiped out our plans for the future.
In 1981, I went to work in the States with my family, but I came back to the village every summer, to spend the summer holiday here and improve the soil in my plot. Five years ago, I moved back here, even though I have seven married sons and daughters who work and live there with their families. They come to visit every once in a while, but I want to stay here now, to be close to my land, and to try and protect what’s left of it as much as I can.
All the residents of this area suffer daily. The settlers and the settlements have become a nightmare that mars every moment of our lives. We have nothing left to do but put our faith in God and pray that they leave.
The settlement outpost of Ami Hai was built about 500 meters away from the Kuk family land in 2018. It is located near the older settlement outpost of Adei Ad.