Palestinians in Khan Al Ahmar reprieved after Israeli bulldozers fail to turn up for demolition
Miriam Berger reports from the hamlet of Khan Al Ahmar where hundreds of protesters have joined 180 residents as they wait for Israeli demolition orders to be carried out
Palestinians were braced as yesterday’s deadline for an Israeli demolition of their homes in Khan Al Ahmar in the West Bank came and went.
Israel claimed that the 12-kilometre-long hamlet of corrugated houses outside an Israeli settlement was illegal and that residents must either leave or face a forced removal.
The court-ordered demolition was due to begin last night, but by sunset Israeli soldiers were still nowhere to be seen as residents shared coffee while awaiting their fate. For weeks, hundreds of activists have camped in Khan Al Ahmar in an effort to help civilians resist Israeli troops with non-violent resistance.
“We are going to sit inside the shacks and will not leave and let them take us out by force,” one activist said.
But for the 180 residents of the hamlet and other Palestinians in the West Bank, receiving building permits to rebuild their lives elsewhere proves almost impossible.
Critics say the demolition is just a plan to make room for the expansion of Israeli settlements, deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice. For Palestinians the move on Khan Al Ahmar is part of a decades-old creeping annexation of territory they seek for a future state. The move would cut off Palestinian parts of the West Bank from Jerusalem and connect Israeli settlements.
The village is in the 60 per cent of the West Bank known as Area C, which is under Israeli control and is home to dozens of Israeli settlements.
As part of peace deals in the 1990s, the West Bank was split into autonomous and semi-autonomous Palestinian areas, known as Areas A and B, and Area C, which is home to 400,000 Israeli settlers. The Palestinians claim all of the West Bank for their future state and say that Area C, home also to an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 Palestinians, is crucial to its economic development.
Home demolitions are not unusual, but the removal of an entire community is rare and has caused an outcry from European countries. But pressure from the international community has not changed the Israeli government’s plans.
“I am here defending my country and defending my land,” a 47-year-old resident said.
The threat of demolition has put the makeshift Palestinian hamlet of Khan Al Ahmar in the occupied West Bank on the international map.
Yesterday as the village’s 180 residents – half of whom are children – braced for signs of Israeli bulldozers, they and protesters gathered under a big tent.
The mood was calm but defiant in the Bedouin community of tin and wooden shacks, tucked alongside a highway that runs from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea.
By sunset, Israeli soldiers were nowhere in sight. The Palestinians, old friends by this point in their months-long struggle, gathered, shared coffee and chatted while steeling themselves for what the night, morning or next day could bring.
Hundreds more, including Jewish and international activists, were expected to come by the day’s end to spend the night, sing songs and make one last stand, organisers said.
Besides that there was not much residents or the politically weakened and divided Palestinian leadership could do.
Midnight was the deadline for Khan Al Ahmar’s demolition and for many Palestinians, an end to realistic hopes for a state of their own any time soon.
“I am here defending my country and defending my land,” said Abdullah Abu Rahman, 47, a resident of the West Bank village of Bil’in, who has spent the past 104 days at Khan Al Ahmar since the latest round of threats.
Bil’in for years was the site of weekly non-violent protests against Israel’s separation wall, which still stands.
“I see it as my duty to support and defend the rights of the people here,” said Mr Abu Rahman, a seasoned activist.
Khan Al Ahmar’s residents have had to compete for this attention. Palestinians across the West Bank and East Jerusalem are on a general strike today to protest against recent events.
They include Israel’s new Nation State Law, which critics say codifies Palestinians as second-class; the Trump administration’s relocation of the US embassy to disputed Jerusalem, followed by cuts in aid to Palestinian institutions and refugee services; and after nearly 10 years of court battles, what seems the end of the road for trying to stop the razing of Khan Al Ahmar.
The Palestinian Authority, widely unpopular among Palestinians and under assault from the Trump administration, has not been able to do much apart from organising solidarity campaigns and issuing statements condemning the plan.
Leaders from the EU and the UN have told Israel that demolishing the village was a breach of international law but their pressure has not changed the government’s plans.
Protesters say they expect Israeli forces to move in today, although they could arrive any day after that.
Last month, Israel’s Supreme Court rejected an appeal against the demolition order by Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman and ruled that the village could be destroyed and its residents relocated.
Human rights groups such as Amnesty International have called the “forcible transfer of its residents to make way for illegal Jewish settlements a war crime that lays bare the Israeli government’s callous disregard for the Palestinians”.
European countries have warned the demolition will have a dramatic effect on the two-state solution’s prospects and the EU has demanded Israel repay the €315,000 (Dh1.33 million) it provided for infrastructure.
“There’s no justice but more and more legitimising by Israeli law of all atrocities of occupation,” Ahmad Tibi, a Palestinian member of Israel’s parliament, told The National.
Israel’s hard-right government rejects claims that it is breaking international law. It says it wants to expand a motorway and will move Khan Al Ahmar, which has always lacked basic infrastructure and official authorisation, to a more developed, safer area.
But for Palestinians, the village, only 12 kilometres long, has come to symbolise all of the pressures they are facing as Israel pushes ahead to expand its control of land the Palestinians say is theirs, Mr Abu Rahman said.
The Trump administration’s backing of Israel, combined with a divided Palestinian leadership and its weakened international support, has further exacerbated this long-standing tension.
Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem in 1967 – all land the Palestinians have claimed for their independent state.
The 1993 Oslo Peace Accords, then intended as an interim deal, established the semi-autonomous Palestinian Authority in parts of the West Bank, areas A and B, and left Israeli control in the largest part, Area C.
Khan Al Ahmar is in Area C, where in the decades since Israeli settlements have continued to grow and make any unified Palestinian control that much harder.
Now, the motorway Israel plans to expand in its place will act as a corridor between the West Bank’s north and south, connecting Israeli settlements. Khan Al Ahmar is surrounded by four of them – Kfar Adumim, Ma’ale Adumim, Alon and Nofei Prat.
The move will effectively cut off Palestinian parts of the West Bank from Jerusalem.
Villagers, who make a living raising goats and sheep, said they tried to apply for permits to build but Israel has denied their requests.
It is a common practice, human rights groups say.
The planned site for the village’s relocation is near a rubbish tip where refuse from Jerusalem has been dumped.
For the past three days, residents told The National, settlers at nearby Kfar Adumim have sent their sewage into the village.
The people most immediately affected by the demolition will not only be residents, but also the neighbouring schoolchildren.
The village’s school, built from car tyres and with aid from the EU, serves 250 children who pool from some of the other 45 Bedouin villages in the area. Israel also does not recognise these other hamlets and has issued similar demolition orders.
Khan Al Ahmar does not look very impressive. Palestinian flags line the main unpaved road, which leads to a makeshift school, clinic, mosque, reception tent and collection of homes and huts for animals.
For years Israel has refused to connect the community to water supplies, roads or electricity. Solar panels, financed by the EU, have met some of this need.
But residents say the place’s power is rooted in its history. The community is part of the Jahalin tribe, which originally came from an area called Tel Arad in the Negev desert, now also part of Israel.
The Israeli military expelled the community from there in the 1950s and it settled in Khan Al Ahmar. The location met three basic needs for Bedouins, said resident and organiser Eyad Jahalin, 52. It was near a water source, next to a road leading to commercial centre and in a largely arid and empty area.
But in the years since, the area has become industrialised and the adjacent small road leading to Jerusalem, first built by the British, has turned into a major Israeli motorway, Mr Jahalin said.
Tonight could be his last night in his home. But it also may not be. Some activists have speculated that Israel will wait until the attention over Khan Al Ahmar has died down before destroying it.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is due to visit Israel this week and destroying the village during her visit could increase the outrage.
Either way, Mr Abu Rahman said he was still “optimistic and hopeful that we will succeed” in stopping the demolition.
“Of course, if it happens I’ll be very sad and it won’t be easy to accept,” he said.
But he said he and his compatriots would be there to help the community rebuild.
I am here defending my country and defending my land. It is my duty to support and defend the rights of the people here ABDULLAH ABU RAHMAN Palestinian activist in Khan Al Ahmar