"The harassment by Israeli settlers had become unbearable," said Rashid, a young mother, as she stood leaning on the metal doorframe of her home in Ras Ein el-Auja in the occupied West Bank. Nearby, a few suitcases and other belongings sat in the corner, neatly packed. "There is no safety left. We've been suffering for three years, but now the provocations increased," Rashid told DW, speaking of how settlers entered their home.
In 1916, Daher Nassar, a Christian Palestinian farmer living south of Bethlehem, made a move considered more than unusual at the time. He 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. A few years later, after transferring the title to his son, Nassar did something even more extraordinary. He re-registered the deed under each successive administration the British mandate, then the Jordanian government,
