Israel warned against demolition

Destroying Palestinian village will affect two-state solution, European nations say

Eight European countries at the United Nations, including five Security Council members, on Thursday called on Israel to reverse its decision to demolish a Palestinian village in the West Bank.

Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Belgium, Poland and the Netherlands warned that the demolition of the village of Khan Al Ahmar “would severely threaten the viability of the two-state solution”.

“We therefore call upon the Israeli authorities to reconsider their decision to demolish Khan Al Ahmar,” the countries said in a joint statement released ahead of a council meeting on the Middle East.

On September 5, Israel’s Supreme Court upheld an order to raze the village on grounds that it was built without the proper permits.

The community of roughly 200 people is located in a strategic spot near Israeli colonies and along a road leading to the Dead Sea.

There have been warnings that continued Israeli colony construction in that area could divide the West Bank into two and cut it off from occupied Jerusalem, killing off the prospect of amassing contiguous land for a viable future Palestinian state.

Show of defiance

The Israeli regime has not announced a date for the demolition, but earlier this month, it dismantled five corrugated metal shacks near Khan Al Ahmar that had been set up by villagers a few days earlier in a show of defiance. Occupation troops returned with heavy equipment, removing earthen mounds set up to slow demolition. Two Palestinians and an American-French law professor were detained; the professor was later released.

The residents of Khan Al Ahmar are members of the Jahalin Bedouin tribe that has lived in the area since being expelled from the southern Negev Desert after Israel’s establishment in 1948. The United Nations granted them refugee status.

Residents acknowledge that life in their village is tough. But they say there is no place they would rather live. They say the Israeli occupation regime is trying to move them to a site that will be too crowded for their livestock and that sits near a sewage facility and a garbage dump.

“We Bedouin people like the desert life,” said Yousuf Abu Dahouq, a Khan Al Ahmar resident, sitting on a wooden bench near the school, sipping tea and smoking a waterpipe. “We live next to each other, support each other.”