More than 30 years after they were sent to guard the lands of the state, these days at Talia Farm in the Mount Hebron Regional Council they are forced to fight against the Palestinians who are trying to take over their land and are backed by leftist activists.
According to them, the state is abandoning them and even though it was the government that sent them there, now the civil administration and the army are turning a cold shoulder on them and claiming that this is an illegal outpost - which is not true.
In 1995, Yaakov Talia, a new immigrant from South America with extensive experience in managing and operating agricultural farms, was asked to establish a single farm east of Beit Yatir in order to preserve 4,350 dunams of grazing land belonging to the World Zionist Organization.
Talia agreed to settle in the place on the condition that he would receive government backing, and the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed the approval for the establishment of the complex, weeks before he was assassinated.
Signed the approval of the establishment of the complex.
The late Rabin, photo: Meir Partosh
In 2006, the challenges began: following a petition by Palestinians, the Civil Administration forbade Talia from entering half of his farm.
In 2015 Talia was killed in a work accident, and after a year in which his daughter Liora Ben Tzur managed the farm, her brother took over the management.
But besides the ongoing maintenance of the farm, they have to deal with Palestinians who come with the backing of left-wing activists and cultivate land that they say is private land.
At the farm they say that the Palestinians are plowing an additional part of the land each time, and thus taking over more and more areas of the farm.
Recently, Major Rafe Haj, the ombudsman of the Yehuda Regional Division, sent a letter that aroused their anger and their feeling that they were abandoned in the field, even though they were sent by the state to the scene.
Under the heading "Giving the licensee access to their lands near the illegal outpost 'Talia Farms'", the ombudsman wrote to attorney Kemer Masherki that there is no obstacle for the Palestinians to make agricultural use of the land and the access road that leads to it.
"An inspection conducted by the coordinator of the guardian of Hebron revealed that Marshich had a connection to Kourit with the land," he wrote.
At Hava, they are angry both at the definition of the Hava as an illegal outpost, even though the rule is not such, and at the fact that the IDF and the Civil Administration disown them and do not help them in the face of what they see as takeover attempts by the Palestinians under the auspices of the state.
"We were required to maintain state territories, and the state is pushing us."
South Mount Hebron, archive, photo: Oren Ben Hakon
"We were required to maintain state territories, and the state is pushing us and not backing us up," enraged Liora Ben Tzur.
"We had territories that we used for income, and each time they decide, under the guidance of the military attorney's office, to take more territory. In the meantime, the Palestinians are annexing more territory. We are left alone. Where is the state? You asked us to keep the territory, and meanwhile you are the ones who enable the theft of the territories. Why do you write that this is an illegal outpost? Legal, when it is clear to everyone that this is not the case? They abandoned us."
The Unit for Coordination of Government Actions in the Territories and the IDF spoke in response: "Contrary to what has been claimed, the mentioned area is defined as private land, which is not included in the area of state lands declared in the area, and this is based on the inspection of the authorized professionals in the Civil Administration.
It should be noted that there is no prohibition on the very act of crossing state lands, and in any case the movement of the Palestinians was coordinated with the forces of the brigade."
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