BEDOUIN VILLAGE RESIDENTS AWAIT ISRAELI COURT RULING ON WHERE THEIR FUTURE LIES
▶ Tribal settlements under threat as Israel says structures were built without permits. Ben Lynfield reports
In the tiny West Bank Bedouin village of Khan Al Ahmar, teachers were trying hard on Wednesday to keep pupils’ minds focused on their studies – and not the impending demolition of their homes.
This week the Israeli Supreme Court is expected to rule on the fate of the village, which is east of Jerusalem along the main highway to the Dead Sea between the expanding settlements of Maale Adumim and Kfar Adumim.
Kfar Adumim’s spacious homes are perched on a hill overlooking the corrugated metal and wood shanties that are home to 35 families of the Jahalin tribe.
Khan Al Ahmar is one of 12 Bedouin settlements in the area, with a total population of about 1,400 residents, that are threatened with demolition.
Critics say it is a campaign to clear the strategic area of Bedouin communities to bolster Israel’s ambitions for permanent control and allow expansion of nearby settlements.
Israel says Khan Al Ahmar must be levelled because its structures were built without permits on state land. These permits are nearly impossible to obtain in the part of the West Bank known as Area C, which is under full Israeli control.
Under government plans, the Bedouin are to be relocated to land near a landfill in Abu Dis, a West Bank suburb of East Jerusalem.
On Wednesday, two army officers pulled up in a white vehicle, got out and walked near the school for a few minutes, with M-16s slung over their shoulders.
In the school, a structure made of a mud and tyres by an Italian non-government organisation, mathematics teacher Isra Zahran kept to the lesson plan despite the gnawing uncertainty.
“We have exams next week so we are preparing for exams,” Ms Zahran said.
Next door, geography teacher Ghadeer Abu Taher spoke about Malaysia, telling pupils it was a strong supporter of the Palestinian cause.
But asked about the future, pupils voiced disquiet. A Grade 6 girl wearing a blue shirt with a Palestinian flag on it, spoke up.
“We were born here,” she said. “Fifty years ago we were here so it’s very hard to leave this place.”
The Bedouin moved to Khan Al Ahmar in 1953 after being expelled from Israel’s southern Negev desert, said local leader Eid Abu Khamis. At the time, the area was under Jordanian rule.
After Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967, the Bedouin continued their pastoral herding lifestyle and things were “more or less OK”, Mr Abu Khamis said. In later years, many landed jobs in nearby settlements.
After the 1993 Oslo Agreement, Khan Al Ahmar became part of Area C and Israel started to impose strictures, such as not allowing residents to build extensions of their homes, Mr Abu Khamis said.
Building the school in 2009 was a turning point, with settler leaders regarding it as a consolidation of an unwanted Arab presence near the settlements.
Khan Al Ahmar residents lost their permits to work on the settlements, including Mr Abu Khamis, who had worked for 15 years in Kfar Adumim.
Israeli military administrators then began to issue demolition orders and in 2015 sent in bulldozers to destroy some homes, he said. Then in March last year, the state issued demolition orders against the entire village.
The villagers’ Israeli lawyer, Shlomo Lecker, filed a petition against the demolitions, which a panel of three judges is set to rule on.
Mr Abu Khamis is bracing for the worst. While the EU last year sharply criticised the demolition plans as a breach of international law, he said bitterly that “the world abandoned us. It didn’t apply enough pressure”.
“Look over there,” he said, gesturing towards Kfar Adumim. “Look at all the things they get. Here we get demolition orders”
The state says it favours demolition because Khan Al Ahmar is an incontrovertible case of illegal building. It said that the
You can’t relocate people according to your own designs. They’ve been in this area for decades. We insist they should stay where they are ABDULLAH ABDULLAH Palestinian Legislative Council
village’s close proximity to a major highway poses a safety risk to its residents.
A spokeswoman for Israeli military administrators implied the Bedouin would be better off at the new site, saying that there they will be hooked up to electricity and water and could build legally. She said authorities planned to build a school at the new site.
But Mr Lecker is not convinced.
“It is not a real alternative,” he said. “The state is proposing a tiny area for each family, a quarter of a dunam [about 250 square metres] for a large family and herds.
“It is not an agricultural area, it is surrounded by buildings. Moreover, people in Abu Dis claim ownership of it and have warned the Bedouin not to come.”
Danny Tirza, the mayor of Kfar Adumim, said the Bedouin living near the highway at Khan Al Ahmar constituted a strategic threat to Israel.
“It is one of the jobs of the settler movement to defend such strategic points in Judea and Samaria [the Israeli government term for the West
Bank] from being taken over by the Palestinian Authority,” Mr Tirza told The Times of Israel.
“These Bedouin were not just put there for no reason. The school was not built for no reason. It was built strictly out of political motives.”
Hagit Ofran, who monitors settlements for the Israeli Peace Now organisation, said that Khan Al Ahmar was close to Maale Adumim, the leaders of which want to expand their settlement in an area known as E1 so that it links up with Israeli settlement neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem.
That would deal a major blow to aspirations for a viable Palestinian state by cutting off areas of the northern West Bank from those of the southern West Bank.
“In general in Area C, the Israeli government does not want a Palestinian presence at all,” Mr Ofran said.
Abdullah Abdullah, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, called the plan to evict Khan Al Ahmar residents “an absolute violation of international law”.
“You can’t relocate people according to your own designs,” Mr Abdullah said. “They’ve been in this area for decades. We insist they should stay where they are. It’s their right.”