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A Palestinian Bedoin woman in the West Bank stands by her recently demolished shack |
CAIRO (Marwa Awad)
Israel said Sunday it has allocated $250 million to West Bank settlements in defiance of American pressure to freeze expansion even as Israeli bulldozers raze the homes and lands of Palestinian Bedoins.
Israel plans to allocate the money over the next two years, with the vast majority of it, $125 million, to be used for security expenses and most of the rest for housing construction, army radio said, basing its report on the 2009-2010 budget that has yet to be approved by the Knesset.
Razing shacks and shelters to the ground is a familiar sight to Palestinian Bedouins of the West Bank, dozens of whom have been displaced as Israeli bulldozers destroy homes and livelihoods in a matter of minutes, putting in force the Israeli government's plans to expand existing settlements at the expense of Palestinian land.
" An Israeli bulldozer came in the morning and flattened my shack, my two animal pens and now my family and I are homeless " Abu Faqr Hemdany, West Bank herder "An Israeli bulldozer came in the morning and flattened my shack, my two animal pens and now my family and I are homeless," Abu Faqr Hemdany, a Bedouin herder living in Ras al-Ahmar with his family of three children and a wife, told Al Arabiya.
This was the third time Hemdany’s shack was demolished and his tattered furniture flattened, only this time the bulldozers razed his newly-acquired animal pens, leaving him without livestock.
Hemdany said Israeli soldiers told him he was dwelling in a military zone that must be cleared. "But everywhere we go they come up with something and force us to leave," he said.
So he pitched his fourth tent a few hundred meters (a few thousand feet) away from his latest demolished dwelling and plans to build another shack once he gets more goats to herd. |
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Military Zone " The Israeli military warns Palestinian herders of the danger of living in military zones and that they must move to a safer place " Spokesman of Israeli Civil Administration of West Bank The latest eviction notices were issued to two dozen families in 24 hours and carried out two weeks ago on June 4, the day President Obama demanded from Cairo a halt on Israeli settlement expansion.
The Jewish state has allowed close to 400,000 Jews to settle in the occupied West Bank in addition to 180,000 in Israel’s Arab sector in Israel according to Peace Now, an Israeli anti-settlement watchdog group.
Palestinian activist groups said about 200 families, all nomadic herders who have grazed their stocks in the area for decades, are set to be displaced in the coming months, while the U.N. said that 128 Palestinians with 66 children and 34 women were displaced from this agricultural land over the past years.
Israel's Civil Administration in the West Bank, however, said the evictions were legal and necessary as Bedouins continued to pitch their tents in dangerous military zones used for weapons training.
"The Israeli military warns Palestinian herders of the danger of living in military zones and that they must move to a safer place," a spokesman told Al Arabiya. |
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Land rights " We help nomadic herders and their families pick up the broken pieces of their remote lives because we are determined to stay in the land and fight illegal displacement from the Jordan Valley " Sareen Suwayfta, Jordan Valley Solidarity Israeli has six army camps in Ras al-Ahmar, where two army training areas take up 60 sq. miles (90 km) of land. Although Israel has full control of the area under the Oslo peace accords, the demolitions take place on land in the way of Jewish settlements like Rotem, Roi, Maskiyyot and Mehola. All Jewish settlements are illegal under international law.
And as no other relocation options exist, Bedouins end up re-pitching their tents and building their shacks from scratch, in an ongoing cycle of displacement and relocation.
"We help nomadic herders and their families pick up the broken pieces of their remote lives because we are determined to stay in the land and fight illegal displacement from the Jordan Valley," Sereen Suwayfta from Jordan Valley Solidarity group, told Al Arabiya.
Fifty-year-old farmer Abu Abdul Allah Khadry, is determined to remain where he is and said his determination is a matter of surviving the occupation.
"I was here for as long as I remember. This land I live on is all that I know," Khadry, who said he has documented papers proving his West Bank origins and ownership of the land he lives on, told Al Arabiya. |
" There will always be excuses and explanations for why we have to move from this spot and leave this area, but in the end, it is a matter of sticking to your land rights " Abu Abdullah Khadry, West Bank Bedoin Khadry believes the evictions are solely based on Israel’s attempts to demographically manipulate the West Bank by displacing Palestinians to make way for more Jewish settlers.
"There will always be excuses and explanations for why we have to move from this spot and leave this area, but in the end, it is a matter of sticking to your land rights," said Khadry.
A recent report by the U.K.-based charity Save the Children found that an average of three houses are demolished every day, while some villages like Wadi al-Maleh have been given blanket demolition orders.
But despite the frequency of these demolitions, they fail to garner enough attention from the international community.
"Unlike the demolitions of actual building structures like the homes of Palestinians in East Jerusalem, the demolitions here are a shady business because there are no permanent concrete structures but shacks and pens of pastoral peoples," Suwayfta explained, adding that the herders are remote, poor farmers who rank as the poorest among Palestinians in the Occupied Territories Original Source: http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2009/06/21/76629.html
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