Protests erupt at Bedouin village Israel plans to demolish

KHAN AL AHMAR, West Bank — Palestinian protests broke out on Wednesday at a Bedouin village in the occupied West Bank facing Israeli demolition in what rights groups have condemned as a bid to expand illegal Jewish settlement, Reuters reported.

Israel moved three bulldozers to the village, Khan Al Ahmar, earlier in the day though demolition had yet to begin, after the military left a land confiscation notice there on Tuesday, according to Reuters.

"Today they are proceeding with infrastructure work to facilitate the demolition and forcible transfer of residents," Amit Gilutz, spokesman for B'Tselem, told Agence France-Presse.

Around 180 Bedouin, raising sheep and goats, live in tin and wood shacks in Khan Al Ahmar. It is situated between a major Israeli settlement, Maale Adumim near occupied Jerusalem, and a smaller one to the northeast, Kfar Adumim.

Khan Al Ahmar was built without Israeli permits, which Palestinians say are impossible to obtain. Israel has long sought to clear Bedouins from the area between the two settlements and the supreme court approved the demolition in May, according to Reuters.

Senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat condemned the demolition plans and appealed to the international community.

"Are we coming to see one day that Israel can be held accountable?" he asked AFP journalists in Ramallah. "If not, it means you're pushing this region towards a deeper hole of violence and counter-violence and extremes."

Britain's minister of state for the Middle East, Alistair Burt, visited the village in May and called on the Israeli government to show restraint, reported AFP.

He warned that any forced relocation "could constitute forcible transfer of people as far as the United Nations is concerned".

Forcible transfer is considered a violation of the Geneva Conventions.

Removing the Bedouin, human rights groups say, would create a bigger illegal settlement pocket near Jerusalem and make it more difficult for Palestinians to achieve territorial contiguity in the West Bank, a territory they seek along with the Gaza Strip for a future state.

At Khan Al Ahmar, Israeli occupation forces punched several Palestinian men as they dragged them away during Palestinian protests against the planned demolition. A Palestinian ambulance service said 35 protesters were hurt and four of them were taken to the hospital, according to Reuters. Israeli occupation forces said 11 people were arrested, according to AFP.

"I was born here and will not move anywhere else," said Feisal Abu Dahok, 45. "If they destroy the village, we will build it again here or nearby."

Israel said it plans to relocate the residents to an area about 12 kilometres away, near the Palestinian village of Abu Dis.

The new site is adjacent to a landfill and rights advocates say that a forcible transfer of the residents would violate international law applying to occupied territory, according to Reuters.

At a news briefing in Geneva on Tuesday, a spokeswoman for the UN human rights office expressed concern at reports of impending demolition.

"For more than a decade people in the Khan Al Ahmar community... have resisted efforts to move them to make way for settlement expansion," the spokeswoman, Liz Throssell, said, Reuters reported.

She said "international humanitarian law prohibits the destruction or confiscation of private property by the occupying power", a reference to Israel, which captured the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war.

In another Bedouin village in the same region, Abu Nuwar, Israel carried out a series of demolitions on Wednesday on what it described as “illegally built structures”, according to AFP.

B'Tselem said nine residential structures and three agricultural ones were demolished, leaving 62 people homeless.

Most countries regard settlements Israel has built in the West Bank as illegal. Khan Al Ahmar's residents belong to the Jahalin tribe of Bedouin who were expelled from southern Israel by occupation forces in the 1950s.