For the residents of a remote Palestinian village, located near the northern West Bank city of Nablus, it seems that the hands of the clock has stopped moving. Around 1,200 people live in the village with no water or electricity supply.
The first ten years of the 21st century have passed, while the villagers of Froosh Beit Dajan in southeast of Nablus still lives in the "middle ages" -- isolated, gloomy, with no sign of modern life, because it was classified as part of the Area C by Israel.
The houses in the village were built with tins, with only one unpaved road leading to it. Its residents make a living in farming and sheep herding. Their lives are extremely poor and backward, compared with the outer world which is witnessing a fast revolution of technology and industry.
Tawfiq al-Haj Mohamed, headmaster of the only school in the village, told Xinhua that the Israeli authorities refuse to recognize the village as a village, and insist on considering it as part of "Area C" in the West Bank.
He added that the Israelis have turned the village into "hell".
Under interim peace agreements with the Palestinians, Israel exercises full military and civil control over some 60 percent of the West Bank, a zone known as "Area C".
"The Israeli authorities prevent any movement of reconstruction or infrastructure improvement in the village. They refuse to connect the village with power, despite the efforts of the residents as well as the official bodies of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA)," said al-Haj Mohamed.
Residents of the village said that the Israeli authorities had seized around 10,000 dunums (1 dunum equals 100 square meters) from the lands of the village for settlement and separation wall building, adding that "the Israelis don't allow the residents to fix what remained of their lands."
What enraged al-Haj Mohamed and the other residents of the village the most is that the pupils of the only school in the village suffer a lot.
There are Israeli army roadblocks that cut the village and block the free movement of the residents, said al-Haj Mohamed.
"They do not only prevent us from paving a road or building a hospital, they also ban building one extra classroom or a medical clinic with simple facilities," said al-Haj Mohamed, adding the three wells of groundwater were also confiscated by the Israelis to irrigate the settlements.
He went on saying with pain that despite the hard living conditions the residents of the village have suffered, "they still live in their village and never think of leaving, simply because they do not want to give up their village to the settlers."
Ghassan Daghlas, who is in charge of settlement affairs in the West Bank, told Xinhua that the residents of the village "ask nothing more than regular water and electricity supply, to maintain the lowest level of living," adding that the Israeli army has confiscated their lands, their farms and their sheep.
"The Israeli army uses the nearby lands for military training, so the shepherds of the village are prohibited from working and living there," said Daghlas, who called for easing the restriction on the farmers of the village to export their products.
Israel has imposed a tight siege on the village and the area surrounding it, claiming that it is a closed military area. The Israeli soldiers prevent any stranger, including the residents of the village, to enter. The residents have been calling on humanitarian organizations to help them end their sufferings.
Khaled al-Qawasmeh, PNA minister of municipal affairs, told Xinhua, "Classifying the region as Area C blocks the construction of developing projects that are financed by the Palestinian National Authority. These uncompleted projects are planned to help the population of the village to receive proper basic humanitarian services."
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a report in 2009 that Israel's restrictive planning regime in Area C meant tens of thousands of Palestinians were left with no choice other than to build without authorization, risking the demolition of their homes.
The UN body said it recorded the demolition of 180 Palestinian- owned Area C structures in 2009. The demolitions displaced 319 Palestinians, including 167 children.
What has complicated the living conditions of the population in Froosh Beit Dajan is that Israel doesn't recognize the village as an administrative village. Each time when the Palestinian government prepares plans to reconstruct the village, it is always blocked by the Israeli measures.
"It is a bureaucracy," said al-Qawasmeh.
Last October, International Quartet Envoy Toni Blair who toured several remote villages in the West Bank vowed that he will work on stopping the Israeli geographical and security classifications. Although the Palestinian government has referred to its donor countries for help, the crisis is still going on.
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