One family's epic fight to hold on to their West Bank farm

In 1916, Daher Nassar, a Christian Palestinian farmer living south of Bethlehem, 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.

- By Lorenzo Tondo and Sufian Taha

Nassar then 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's farm Israeli “state land”, a precursor to claiming it for occupation.

“I received this land as a gift,” said Daoud Nassar, 55, Daher's grandson. “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. For us Palestinians, the land is a gift - and a gift cannot be sold or given away.”