Israel’s SC upholds the demolition of West Bank hamlets

JERUSALEM: Israel’s Supreme Court has upheld a long-standing expulsion order against eight Palestinian hamlets in the occupied West Bank, potentially leaving at least 1,000 people homeless, an Israeli rights group representing the villagers said Thursday.

The verdict, issued late Wednesday as Israel largely shut down for its Independence Day, marks the end of a more than two-decade legal struggle by Palestinians in the Masafer Yatta region of the southern West Bank to maintain communities they say go back decades.

“Without warning in the middle of the night, the Israeli High Court of Justice published a verdict with unprecedented consequences,” the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which has represented the residents throughout the process, said in a statement.

“The High Court has officially authorized leaving entire families, with their children and their elderly, without a roof over their heads,” it said.

Roni Pelli, an attorney at the association, said the verdict is final and it’s not clear if there are any further legal steps that can be taken. The forcible displacement of the communities could happen at any time, she told The Associated Press.

The military declared the area a firing and training zone in the

early 1980s. Israeli authorities have argued that the residents only used the area for seasonal agriculture and had no permanent structures there at the time. In November 1999, security forces expelled some 700 villagers and destroyed homes and cisterns, the association said. The legal battle began the following year.