Ethnic cleansing: Israeli bulldozers move in to raze Palestinian homes
•New demolitions in three areas of Jerusalem •30 houses destroyed already this year
Israeli bulldozers moved into three Palestinian areas of Jerusalem on Wednesday and began demolishing homes in a campaign that critics have described as ethnic cleansing.
As buildings in Sur Baher, Wadi AlHummus and Silwan were reduced to rubble and their occupants left homeless, rights groups urged the Palestinian Authority, the international community and global institutions to intervene immediately to force Israel to halt the demolitions. Occupation forces have razed 30 homes in Jerusalem already this year, added to the 211 Palestinian properties that were demolished in 2022.
In the village of Al-Khan Al-Ahmar, east of Jerusalem, a sit-in protest by villagers and activists from the Palestinian Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission continued for a second day on Wednesday. Residents of the village and surrounding Bedouin communities fear Israeli authorities will demolish their homes, after a final sixmonth deadline for them to leave expired on Wednesday.
Eid Khamis Jahalin, a Bedouin leader from Al-Khan Al-Ahmar, told Arab News that people expected Israeli bulldozers to destroy the village and displace its 250 residents. Palestinian leaders believe the increased pace of demolitions is being driven by anti-Palestinian elements in Israel’s new far-right coalition government, the most extreme in the country’s history. Cabinet members include Itamar Ben-Gvir, the security minister, who has criminal convictions for anti-Palestinian hate speech and supporting a Zionist terror group; and finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, a notorious racist who incites hatred against Arab citizens of Israel.
“The electoral program of both Ben-Gvir and Smotrich is based on the demolition of Al-Khan Al
Hamar and the displacement of its inhabitants,” Jahalin told Arab News.
Hussein Al-Sheikh, from the Palestine Liberation Organization, called on the international community to intervene immediately to halt the demolitions carried out by Israeli occupation forces in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, which he described as a continuation of a policy of “displacement and apartheid.”
He said the Palestinian leader
ship would meet on Friday to discuss ways to respond.
Ben-Gvir and Smotrich both live in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, where Israeli authorities were accused on Wednesday of tolerating settler violence against Palestinians for more than 17 years.
The Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din published a new report that said only 3 percent of cases of ideological crimes committed by Israelis against Palestinians
in the West Bank in that time resulted in convictions and 93 percent of cases were closed with no indictment filed.
Between 2005 and 2022, Israeli police failed to investigate 81.5 percent of alleged crimes committed by Israelis against Palestinians and their property.
“The state of Israel is evading its duty to protect Palestinians from Israelis who seek to harm them in the West Bank, as international law requires,” the report said.