Description

The Bir Nabala / Tel al ‘Adassa
Bedouin community consists of nine
families who are part of the Ka’abne
tribe, which was originally displaced
from what is now southern Israel to
the Hebron area in 1948. Community
residents have lived in the area
between Ramallah and Jerusalem
since the late 1950s, under an informal
arrangement with land owners from
the adjacent town of Beit Hanina
al Balad. Within this area, since the
mid-1990s, they have been settled in
the Tel al ‘Adassa area, just inside the
municipal boundary of Jerusalem,
following previous demolitions.
All of the residents hold West Bank
ID cards. As a result, under Israeli
legislation, their presence within the
Jerusalem municipal boundary is
illegal, unless they obtain permission from the Israeli authorities.

In 2002, following a wave of violent attacks
against Israeli civilians, the Israeli
authorities began building a Barrier
with the stated aim of preventing
such attacks. The vast majority of the
Barrier’s route, however, is located
within the occupied West Bank, rather
than on the Green Line, separating
Palestinian communities and farming
land from the rest of the West Bank
and contributing to the fragmentation
of the occupied Palestinian territory (oPT).

The Barrier was completed in the
Bir Nabala area in September 2007,
with a devastating impact on the
Tel al ‘Adassa Bedouin community;
residents found themselves located
on the “Jerusalem” side of the Barrier,
physically separated from their service
centre of Bir Nabala and the rest of the
West Bank, and unable to legally enter
East Jerusalem.

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