{"id":4382,"date":"2018-06-18T15:58:28","date_gmt":"2018-06-18T15:58:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jahalin.org\/?p=4382"},"modified":"2018-06-25T16:00:19","modified_gmt":"2018-06-25T16:00:19","slug":"villagers-resist-threatened-demolition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jahalin.org\/archive\/?p=4382","title":{"rendered":"Villagers resist threatened demolition"},"content":{"rendered":"

Annelies Verbeek<\/a><\/span>\u00a0The Electronic Intifada<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

The heat pressed down on the sheet metal structures of\u00a0Khan al-Ahmar<\/a>. Mistrustful of outsiders, villagers asked that their voices not be recorded when they sat down to discuss the threatened demolition of their village.<\/p>\n

Children played near the village school over which a banner in Arabic proclaimed: \u201cWe are the Jahalin Bedouin Tribe, don\u2019t demolish our homes that have been here for 50 years!\u201d<\/p>\n

On 24 May, an Israeli high court\u00a0ruling<\/a>\u00a0authorized the demolition of the entire occupied West Bank village \u201cany time the government sees fit,\u201d as of June.<\/p>\n

Israeli authorities are planning to relocate the\u00a0Bedouin<\/a>\u00a0village\u2019s inhabitants to a location near the garbage dump adjacent to Abu Dis, in the vicinity of Jerusalem. Any such action would require ignoring\u00a0warnings<\/a>\u00a0by rights groups that this sort of forcible transfer amounts to a war crime.<\/p>\n

On 11 June, more than 300 public figures from around the world, including parliamentarians, artists, musicians and intellectuals, signed an\u00a0open letter<\/a>\u00a0opposing the transfer and describing it as a war crime.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey can come any time. We know they will surprise us, at night or in the morning. And they will do it when you are not here to see it,\u201d Nour, 30, who lives in the village, affirmed.<\/p>\n

All villagers who spoke to The Electronic Intifada spoke on condition of anonymity and all names have been changed.<\/p>\n

Eternally displaced<\/h2>\n

The Jahalin are part of five Bedouin tribes that\u00a0were expelled<\/a>\u00a0from their ancestral homelands in the Naqab desert during the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Many of them, like the people of Khan al-Ahmar, fled to the West Bank to settle in the desert along the Jerusalem-Jericho highway.<\/p>\n

After Israel occupied the area in 1967, it refused to recognize the Bedouin villages as residential areas.<\/p>\n

As a consequence, the community, like all Bedouin communities, has not been linked to water and electricity grids. The Bedouins were also prohibited from building new structures in the village, or from turning their tin shacks into concrete houses.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, we don\u2019t want to live like this,\u201d Nour told The Electronic Intifada. \u201cWe want to build concrete houses. We want running water and electricity, and not have rain seeping into our houses at night.\u201d<\/p>\n

The village falls in Area C, the 60 percent of the West Bank that is under full Israeli military and administrative control, and where Israel actively develops and expands its settlements, illegal under international law.<\/p>\n

Consequently, and over the decades, Khan al-Ahmar became surrounded by the Israeli colonies of\u00a0Ma\u2019ale Adumim<\/a>,\u00a0Kfar Adumim<\/a>, Nofei Prat and Alon.<\/p>\n

Connecting settlements<\/h2>\n

\u201cI used to live with my family on the hill across from here,\u201d Sara, 56, said, pointing. \u201cBut they came and they hit my father and my uncle. My mother had a basin of yogurt. They threw it on the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

After that assault, Sara said she and her family fled to settle in Khan al-Ahmar. The hill she used to live on now belongs to the settlement of Kfar Adumim.<\/p>\n

She complains that settlers shoot the sheep when they stray too close and throw stones at the village children.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut what can we do?\u201d Sara asked. \u201cThey have weapons and we don\u2019t. We can\u2019t stop them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The community has also been subject to harassment by the Israeli military. \u201cThey arrest kids for coming too close to the settlement,\u201d Sara explained. \u201cJust to scare them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Landscape<\/picture>
Israel\u2019s high court ruled in late May that the village of Khan al-Ahmar can be razed \u201canytime the government sees fit.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0Oren Ziv<\/span>ActiveStills<\/span><\/small><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As the settlements surround the small village, most of the nearby hills are now off-limits to the Bedouins who need the land to graze their sheep.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only way we are allowed to go now is towards the road,\u201d Nour said.<\/p>\n

Just days after the high court\u2019s verdict on Khan al-Ahmar\u2019s demolition, Israel announced the\u00a0building of 92<\/a>\u00a0new housing units for the nearby Kfar Adumim settlement, so close to the village it would almost render it, should it remain, a no-go area.<\/p>\n

The land of the village, meanwhile, is also next to an area slated for development under the E1 master plan. That plan aims to create an unbroken developed area connecting East Jerusalem with Ma\u2019ale Adumim, the largest Israeli settlement, effectively cutting off Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank for Palestinians.<\/p>\n

Israel would in effect be expanding its illegal annexation of East Jerusalem to territory further inside the West Bank, making it easier to connect Jerusalem to the Jordan Valley through a corridor of illegal settlements that would divide the West Bank into northern and southern parts.<\/p>\n

Struggling for education<\/h2>\n

Due to the village\u2019s illegal status in Israeli law, the Bedouins have been deprived health care, education and municipal services even as neighboring settlements have flourished, provided with luxurious infrastructure and using extensive amounts of water.<\/p>\n

Ma\u2019ale Adumim, for instance,\u00a0houses<\/a>\u00a0\u201cseveral malls, intra-city transportation, and extensive library, health services, an art museum, sports and recreational facilities, a lake, a music conservatory, parks and more.\u201d<\/p>\n

But villagers have fought to improve their lot. With the financial support of an Italian non-governmental organization, Vento Di Terra, they\u00a0built<\/a>\u00a0an elementary school that serves 170 children from the village and four nearby Bedouin communities, some having to travel\u00a015 to 22<\/a>\u00a0kilometers to get an education.<\/p>\n

That, however, did not go down well with the neighbors. Since it was finished in 2009, settlers from the nearby colonies have petitioned the state to demolish the school.<\/p>\n

Nour is convinced that the Israelis don\u2019t want her community\u2019s children to learn. \u201cWe started to read, get smarter,\u201d she told The Electronic Intifada. \u201cThat\u2019s why they are demolishing the school. They want Arabs to be ignorant.\u201d<\/p>\n

War crime<\/h2>\n

The Israeli high court has\u00a0asked the state<\/a>\u00a0to provide an alternative location for the Bedouins to live. But human rights groups have\u00a0warned<\/a>\u00a0that forcibly relocating residents of occupied territory constitutes a war crime under international humanitarian law.<\/p>\n

The alternate location, known as Jabal West, is wedged between the Palestinian town of\u00a0al-Eizariya<\/a>\u00a0and the former Jerusalem municipal garbage dump near Abu Dis.<\/p>\n

Ahmad, 45, said nobody wants to move to this new location, not just because it is being forced upon them, but because it constitutes an unhealthy living environment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is ground water under the garbage dump, the filth seeps into it. Nobody can live there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI only know we would have no space there,\u201d Nour said. \u201cAnd we would not be able to keep our sheep.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A<\/picture>
For decades Israel has prevented villagers from building permanent structures in Khan al-Ahmar.<\/p>\n

Annelies Verbeek<\/span><\/small><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Bedouins would have to give up their pastoral lifestyle to adjust to an urban environment.<\/p>\n

Nour remains confident they will find a way to stay. The Israeli authorities demolished her house two years ago, she said, and she and her family were forced to sleep under a tree.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen we rebuilt our homes,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want a place of our own,\u201d Sara said, dismissing Israel\u2019s plans. \u201cConcrete houses, to be able to travel wherever we want. We will not go to the garbage dump.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if they demolish our homes, we will stay here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ahmad agrees.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were there before them. We are not harming anyone. If they have a problem with us, they should leave.\u201d<\/p>\n

Annelies Verbeek is a Belgian journalist based in Ramallah.<\/em><\/p>\n

Source:\u00a0https:\/\/electronicintifada.net\/content\/villagers-resist-threatened-demolition\/24686<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Annelies Verbeek\u00a0The Electronic Intifada The heat pressed down on the sheet metal structures of\u00a0Khan al-Ahmar. Mistrustful of outsiders, villagers asked that their voices not be recorded when they sat down to discuss the threatened demolition of their village. Children played near the village school over which a banner in Arabic proclaimed: \u201cWe are the Jahalin …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4383,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jahalin.org\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4382"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jahalin.org\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jahalin.org\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jahalin.org\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jahalin.org\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4382"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jahalin.org\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4384,"href":"https:\/\/www.jahalin.org\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4382\/revisions\/4384"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jahalin.org\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jahalin.org\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jahalin.org\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jahalin.org\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}