In the summer of 2015, the military installed a metal gate, placed concrete cubes and dug deep ditches across a section near Route 60, in order to prevent settlers from reaching the remains of the cleared and demolished Homesh Settlement. But this roadblock prevents trucks carrying drinking water, construction materials and heavy shipments from reaching al-Mahfiyah, a neighborhood of Silat a-Dhahr, Jenin District. Inexplicably, the roadblock was placed
before the turn to the dirt road leading to the neighborhood, the only way trucks carrying heavy loads can reach the neighborhood. Trucks cannot reach there through the other road leading to the neighborhood because it is extremely steep and narrow, and cannot be widened because there are houses on both sides of it.
On September 25, 2016,
HaMoked wrote to the military on this issue, demanding to relocate the roadblock a few dozens of meters to the east – beyond the turn to the dirt road, without interfering with the roadblock’s objective. But despite repeated communications from HaMoked, for months the military sent no response.
Only following
HaMoked’s letter to the State Attorney’s Office, and more than four months after HaMoked’s initial letter to the military,
the military responded on February 20, 2017, that it did not intend to move the roadblock to another spot, based on “security” reasons, because “there is still need to prevent access to the zone where once the settlement of ‘Homesh’ used to be”. Moreover, with regard to the damage caused to the inhabitants of al-Mahfiyah neighborhood, the military even claimed that “access from said route to that neighborhood is to begin with an unintentional “by-product” that was created over the years, and use of this route has been made while braking the law, including deliberate damage to the roadblock”.
The military not only disrupts the lives of the Palestinian residents to prevent the removed settlers from returning to the lands grabbed from their Palestinian owners, it also blames the inhabitants of al-Mahfiyah of breaking the law and damaging the roadblock.
