Violation: The occupation begins excavating antiquities.

Location: Mount Al-Tebneh - Deir Nidham village / Ramallah and Al-Bireh Governorate.

Violation date: 24/07/2022 AD.

The perpetrator: the so-called Israeli Antiquities Department.

Affected party: The people of Deir Nidham and Deir Ghassaneh villages.

The violation details:

On Sunday morning, July 24, 2022, the so-called Department of Antiquities of the Israeli Civil Administration forwarded an invitation for an archaeological excavation event funded by the occupation’s Bar Elan University. The invitation targets school pupils and university students over the age of 14, and the event lasts for a week, from July 25 to August 19, 2022 AD.

The open invitation stated that the excavation site will be close to  the settlement of "Benjamin", and Dr. Ravir Raviv from Bar Elan University will be present participate at the event.

It must be added that the targeted area of Mount of Al-Tebneh is located to the north of Deir Nidham village and southwest of Deir Ghassaneh village in Ramallah governorate. This provocative move is considered a continuation of the policy of Judaization and counterfeiting of the occupier's narrative on the pretext that the site is an archaeological area expanding over 292 dunums and must be excavated.

Mr. Munjid Al-Tamimi, a member of the village council in Deir Nidham, gave the following account to LRC's field researcher:

"The targeted area, known as Jabal Al-Tebneh, is considered one of the most important areas for the people of the village of Deir Nidham and the neighboring villages, as it was for a long time planted with wheat and field crops, and hence, formed a main source of income for dozens of families.  In addition, this mountain has a strategic location as it links between the different rural communities in the area. Throughout the ages, this mountain has been famous for the presence of ancient Roman ruins, especially the old wells and the wheat mill".

On the other hand, Mr. Salah Al-Khawaja from the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission believes that this is a method that the occupation resorts to most of the time to implant illusions of a false narrative that the Israeli occupation wants to teach to Jewish students at an early age to create an extremist racist generation that does not recognize the right of non-Jews to live on this land.

It should be noted that the people of the area are afraid that this occupation's step will be a prelude to preventing farmers from accessing and using their agricultural land on the pretext of being an archaeological site, which will negatively affect their lives and well-being, not to mention that most of the farmers from Deir Nizam village own agricultural lands in this particular area.

According to LRC's monitoring records, the Deir Nidham village and other neighboring villages have received a number of military notices which stipulated the closure of many land plots on the pretext that they were state land or archaeological sites, resulting in a decrease of accessible agricultural land for Palestinians in that area of the occupied West Bank.