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| Daoud Nassar walks on his family’s farm near Nahalin in the occupied West Bank, with Israeli settlements in the background. Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian |
In 1916, Daher Nassar, a Christian Palestinian farmer living south of Bethlehem, made a move considered more than unusual at the time. He bought a 42-hectare stretch of farmland on the slopes and valleys of Wadi Salem, and formally registered the purchase with the Ottoman authorities, who then ruled the region.
A few years later, after transferring the title to his son, Nassar did something even more extraordinary. He re-registered the deed under each successive administration – the British mandate, then the Jordanian government, and finally, after 1967, under Israeli occupation.
Today, that ageing, yellowing document is one of the family’s few shields against the loss of their land – a plot that lies near the town of Nahalin in the so-called Area C of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, coveted by settlers and by far-right Israeli ministers eager to see it annexed. In 1991, the Israeli authorities began a legal battle to declare the Nassar family’s farm Israeli “state land”, a precursor to claiming it for occupation.
“I received this land as a gift,” says Daoud Nassar, 55, Daher’s grandchild, who now owns the farm with his family. “My grandfather gave it to my father, who gave it to me and to my brothers and sisters, and we intend to pass it on to our children, and to their children after them. For us Palestinians, the land is a gift – and a gift cannot be sold or given away.”
Nestled in the olive-clad hills of the Judean desert, the Nassar farm survives without direct access to water or electricity – both were cut off by Israeli settlers in 1991 – with the family living partly in underground natural caves. It is the only place they are able to live, because since 1967 when the land was designed part of Area C, under full Israeli military and civil control, any structure – permanent or temporary – requires an Israeli permit. Almost none are granted.
In this way, the family resists Israeli occupation while hemmed in by five illegal settler outposts – one built right up against its boundary – and locked in a 34-year legal battle with the army, forced to water each olive tree by hand, carrying two glasses of water at a time.
To date, the legal battle between the Nassar family and the Israeli government is one of the longest-running cases in the history of the West Bank, and the longest among those still pending.
“Under Ottoman reign, Palestinian farmers and land owners did not register many of the lands, or reported reduced areas in order to avoid taxes, relying instead on oral traditions and local village records,” says Sliman Shaheen, a legal expert in land-related and demolition cases in the West Bank... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/29/palestinian-family-fighting-save-west-bank-farm-israel-settlers