Nuaman
Nuaman or Khallet an Nu'man, also written al-Numan/an-Nu'man, is a small village located just north of Beit Sahour in the Palestinian Governorate of Bethlehem. The Israeli government incorporated its territory within Jerusalem after the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in the 1967 Six-Day War. The village is regarded as neither part of the West Bank, nor part of Jerusalem. A United Nations report has described the villagers as "living in limbo." In terms of local government it is treated together with the neighbouring village Al-Khas, to the west, as one unit. The village had a population of 112 in 2017. Settled by families from the at-Ta'mira Bedouin tribe, it is part of the 'Arab al-Ta'mira village cluster, along with Za'atara, Beit Ta'mir, Hindaza, Tuqu', Khirbet ad-Deir, Ubeidiya and al-Asakra.
Historical background
Nuaman itself is a tiny hamlet, built on a single street, and composed of roughly 25 houses, 13 of which existed, as shown by aerial photos of the period, before 1967. Since 1994, together with Al Khas to the west, Nuaman has been governed by a village council of five members appointed by the Palestinian Authority.The hamlet's name is an eponym, taken from that of the traveler, Nu'man Ben Bisher, who resided there, and its history of habitation goes back at least to 1900. Palestinians began to develop the hamlet of Nuaman on a windy plateau between Jerusalem and Bethlehem in the 1930s during the period of the British Mandatory Government of Palestine. Two families, Bedouin of the Ta'amreh tribe, moved there, the Shawarwa and Darawi, fashioning dwellings from hollowed-out caves initially, and then moving into tents, and finally stone houses. The area was planted with pine breaks, cypress groves, lemon and olive orchards, and vegetable plots, and, in addition they maintained a pastoral economy of grazing sheep. It lies at an altitude of 576 m above sea level and has a mean annual rainfall of 356 mm. Together with Al-Khas, Nuaman lies on 1,474 dunams of land, of which 1,294 are arable, though not particularly fertile, and 31 residential. Title to extensive parts of the Nuaman territory is held by families in Beit Sahour and Sur Baher.
1967
In 1967, when Israel occupied of the area, it made a military census that erred, according to B'Tselem, by defining Nuaman's population as residents of the West Bank. Since the head of a clan resided in Um A-Talla, all the villagers were registered as belonging to that village, and Nuaman was erased from the Israeli map, being renamed Mazmuriya, a reference to a nearby Roman archaeological site. In consequence, they were issued with West Bank identity cards, as opposed to the Israeli identity cards that were distributed to other Palestinian residents in the now municipally unified area of Jerusalem. The oversight transformed most of the townsfolk overnight into illegal residents of the area under Israeli law. As of 2006, the population consisted of some 220 people, of whom an exiguous minority retained Jerusalem identity cards, having migrated there from neighbouring villages. The village was left undisturbed for over two decades. The lives and prospects of the Nuaman villagers have been affected since the mid 1990s by several developments. They were informed by the Jerusalem administration under Ehud Olmert in 1992/3 that no building would be permitted. A further threat arose with the establishment of the Israeli settlement of Har Homa in 1997, which then began to extend its growth over Nuaman's village land, and is planned to replace Nuaman itself. Secondly further confiscations were made to create a military zone. Thirdly, Israel requisitioned some 30 dunams of their land for the Mazmuriya trade terminal, and fourthly, the Jerusalem Ring Road was routed in a way that cut through the hamlet. Finally, the Israeli Separation Barrier, which the Palestinians call the Apartheid Wall, girds the hamlet, cutting it off from Beit Sahour two hundred yards away. The barrier effectively cuts them off from the very West Bank where the Israeli authorities say they belong. Altogether the Wall spread over 2.89 km of the Nuaman-Khas village territory, confiscating 776 dunums of arable land and forest, while isolating Nuaman from its sister community. The Israeli authorities have over the past decades uprooted an estimated 1,000 olive trees, 150 grapevines and 1,000 stone-fruit trees from the joint Nuaman/Al-Khas lands.The anomalous registration has meant that the Jerusalem municipality refuses to supply Nuaman with water, sewage and garbage collecting systems, and denies the inhabitants permits to build houses by denying them a zoning and residential development plan. Garbage trucks are denied entrance. The water pipes to the village from the Palestinian Authority were frequently broken by Israeli bulldozing from 1998 through to 2003, however, it being presumed because in that regard the village was treated as though it were part of the Jerusalem municipality. Bulldozing work on the Separation Wall in May 2006 again uprooted the water mains connections and tore down the only electricity pylon serving the village. The Israeli High Court of Justice, hearing an appeal by the villagers gave the Israeli Ministry of the Interior and the Jerusalem Municipal Council 2 months to resolve the status of the village, as either part of the West Bank or of Jerusalem. No decision either way has ever been forthcoming, and the indeterminacy of their status leaves them in a legal limbo. Family members, mothers, grandmothers and children separated by a few hundred metres cannot visit each other in Nuaman if they lack the proper village ID. Couples who married are prohibited from building a proper home, so no new families can be established, and of 13 expected to marry in 2006, 2 were constrained to build elsewhere, in al-Khas
Some of the infrastructural services they were refused by the Jerusalem authorities were met subsequently by the initiative of the Palestinian Authority.
Young Nuaman women considering marriage find that their suitors are turned back by Israeli soldiers stationed at the village entrance. Other Palestinian suitors, from Jerusalem, back off because they would lose their Jerusalem residency rights if they marry a woman from Nuaman.