MIDDLE EAST : Arab Families Feel Torn Up by the Roots : Palestinians decry Israel’s planned seizure of land they have owned for generations.

Standing on a hilltop in the Palestinian village of Beit Safafa, Mohammed Jadallah surveyed the surrounding landscape with disgust.

“I call them the concrete castles,” Jadallah said of the densely built Jewish neighborhoods that now virtually encircle Beit Safafa. “They leave us no air to breathe.”

Jadallah spoke as he stood on a piece of land owned by his family for generations. Here, on the west side of Beit Safafa, he had hoped to build a home for himself that would one day be passed on to his children.

But the Israeli government has different plans. Two plots of land owned by Jadallah are included in a recently announced larger confiscation of 131 acres in southern Jerusalem, an area in the midst of a commercial and residential building boom.

“In this city, unfortunately, we haven’t enough land to build for the Jews,” said Avraham Kahila, a City Council member who for 13 years served as head of Jerusalem’s building and planning committee.

The confiscation has infuriated the Palestinians and leaders of the Arab states, who have demanded a U.N. Security Council debate on Israeli policies in Jerusalem. The Palestinian Authority and the governments of Jordan and Morocco have warned Israel that Arab-Israeli peace talks may be jeopardized if the confiscation goes through.

The Israelis, however, are standing firm.

*

“Let there be no mistake,” Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert told the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot. “I do not want to enhance the Arab population in Jerusalem. It should not grow. . . . I wish that the Arab minority in Jerusalem will shrink.”

Standing in the eye of the political storm, on land dotted with fruit and olive trees that he planted, Jadallah said he is glad to see Arab leaders protesting the confiscation. But he is not sure that the protests will make any difference.

To Jadallah, Israel’s policy toward the 155,000 Palestinians living in Jerusalem seems straightforward.

“They don’t want us to live here. That is the real problem. The rest of what they say is just propaganda. They do whatever they can to get us out of the land,” he said.

Most of the city’s Palestinian residents live in East Jerusalem. But there are some villages, such as Beit Safafa, on the southern and western sides of the city, that were incorporated into its municipal boundaries in 1948 or 1967. Residents of those villages complain that the bureaucracy is trying to squeeze them out.

“Since 1981, I have tried to build a home here,” Jadallah said. “I couldn’t get a permit. First, they told me that it was green land, to be preserved and not built on. Then they changed the zoning to allow some building. But again, I couldn’t get a permit.”

Now, Jadallah said, he has been told that the hilltop that includes his land will be paved over for an east-west road that will run through Beit Safafa.

In 1967, Beit Safafa was a divided village. Half of it lay inside Jerusalem. The other half lay inside the Jordanian-controlled West Bank. Israel captured the West Bank in the June, 1967, Arab-Israeli War and extended Jerusalem’s boundaries, bringing all of Beit Safafa inside the city limits. But Palestinians consider the West Bank side of Beit Safafa occupied territory.

Since 1967, there have been a series of land confiscations from the village as Jewish neighborhoods have expanded southward beyond the 1967 border.

Today, about 4,500 villagers live hemmed in on all sides by Jewish development projects. Jadallah said that there is nowhere for the young people of Beit Safafa--including his four children--to build homes.

Israeli authorities say that is not true, that permits are available but that families choose not to consolidate their small plots of land and sell them to developers who could put apartments on them.

“They have the rights to build 1,800 flats now in Beit Safafa,” said Kahila, the council member. “But it is a problem of mentality. Jews sell land and let developers build on it. With Arabs, the land stays in the family. They never sell it.”

“Every piece of land which belongs to my family brings back memories,” Jadallah said. “It is as if I am playing a videocassette from my childhood when I visit my land. When I was 10, I remember exactly what we planted and the people who were around. I tell this to my children. My life is interwoven in the land and the life of my family through the ages. It is much more than real estate. It is a part of you.”