{"id":6650,"date":"2018-07-06T11:20:05","date_gmt":"2018-07-06T08:20:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.icahd.fi\/?p=6650"},"modified":"2020-03-31T09:31:53","modified_gmt":"2020-03-31T06:31:53","slug":"jeff-halper-on-demolition-of-khan-al-ahmar-another-chapter-in-the-ethnic-cleansing-of-palestine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.icahd.fi\/en\/jeff-halper-on-demolition-of-khan-al-ahmar-another-chapter-in-the-ethnic-cleansing-of-palestine\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeff Halper on demolition of Khan Al-Ahmar: ”Another chapter in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine”"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Julkaistu 5.7.2018 Middle East Monitorin nettisivuilla, kirjoittaja Jeff Halper (ICAHDin johtaja)<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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https:\/\/www.middleeastmonitor.com\/20180705-demolition-of-khan-al-ahmar-another-chapter-in-the-ethnic-cleansing-of-palestine\/<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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Israeli forces can be seen violently attacking Palestinians as they evict them from their homes in Khan Al-Ahmar village of Jerusalem on 4 July 2018 [Issam Rimawi\/Anadolu Agency]<\/div>\n
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\"Jeff<\/div>\n
Jeff Halper<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/i> @Jeff_Halper<\/a><\/div>\n
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July 5, 2018 at 11:24 am <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The countdown begins. The Bedouin community of Khan Al-Ahmar and its famous tyre-and-adobe school are poised to be demolished<\/a> in the next day or two by the \u201cCivil Administration\u201d, Israel\u2019s Orwellian name for its military government in the Occupied Territory.<\/p>\n

The demolition of Khan al-Ahmar is merely another chapter in a process of displacement that has been going on for 70 years. The Bedouin group inhabiting Khan Al-Ahmar are Al-Jahhalin, a tribe expelled from the Negev desert of Israel in 1952 to make way for the new town of Arad. Simply dumped over the border (although some Jahhalin still have Israeli citizenship), they found a niche in the Judean Desert between Jerusalem and Jericho where they could continue their lives as nomadic herders.<\/p>\n

But in 1967 this land became a valuable part of the West Bank. Controlling this area meant that Israel could effectively cut the West Bank in half, thus foreclosing the possibility of any Palestinian state there. The Bedouin were steadily pushed into ever more remote and constricted areas. In 1976 Israel established Ma\u2019aleh Adumim, today the third largest settlement in the Occupied Territory with more than 40,000 (Jewish) inhabitants, in the centre of Jahhalin life. Since 1997 the Civil Administration has been forcing the Jahhalin off their land entirely, relocating them by force onto a barren hilltop literally on the Jerusalem municipal garbage dump. Trucks full of garbage pass through their crowded shanty town on the way to dumping the garbage below, and the stench is overpowering. (This is part of wider problem of Israel using the West Bank as a disposal site for its urban and industrial \u2013 and some believe nuclear \u2013 waste.)<\/p>\n

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Israeli forces can be seen violently attacking Palestinians as they evict them from their homes in Khan Al-Ahmar village of Jerusalem on 4 July 2018 [Issam Rimawi\/Anadolu Agency]<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The Jahhalin are part of a larger community of 40,000 Bedouin living in the West Bank. Bedouin (the very term means \u201cdesert dweller\u201d) are adept at nomadic living in the desert. In fact, their flocks of sheep and goats provided a major portion of the meat and dairy products to the Palestinian economy. Prevented by Israel from pursuing their lives as herders \u2013 Israel has locked them into more than 100 encampments \u2013 they can no longer maintain their flocks and have fallen into utter poverty, the average Bedouin family earning only $270 per month. Most Bedouin communities have no access to clean drinking water. Thus they consume only 1\/5 of the daily requirement for water as set by the WHO; Israelis, by contrast, consume ten times more water a day, and settlers 25 times more if one includes their landscaping, lavish swimming pools and even the artificial lakes of the settlements. Forty-one per cent of Bedouin families have no electricity; 79 per cent are \u201cfood-insecure\u201d (i.e., malnourished and without a dependable supply of food); they are denied basic education and health services; and the threat of demolition and expulsion constantly hangs over their heads. Besides the human tragedy of it all \u2013 and forcible expulsion is a war crime \u2013 these Israeli policies represent cultural genocide.<\/p>\n

The declared intent of the Civil Administration is to remove all the Bedouin from Area C, part of a process of removal that affects the Palestinian population as a whole. Area C represents 62 per cent of the West Bank, and it is where the Israeli settlements are located. Two and a half million Palestinians of the West Bank \u2013 84 per cent of the population \u2013 are locked into some 70 tiny, isolated and impoverished enclaves called Areas A and B on the other 38 per cent.<\/p>\n

Last month three Israeli Supreme Court justices, including Justice Noam Sohlberg who himself lives in a West Bank settlement, approved the demolition<\/a> of Khan Al-Ahmar because it was constructed \u201cillegally\u201d. This is self-serving sophistry, of course, because the Civil Administration has a policy of not granting building permits to Palestinians for the past 50 years, forcing them to build homes for themselves \u201cillegally.\u201d This highlights the reality that without the legal backing for occupation policies by the Israeli Supreme Court, the occupation would have long since collapsed out of very illegality.<\/p>\n