The government of Israel has ordered for the destruction of a Palestinian Bedouin village. As we read in one report from the Guardian:
Israel’s supreme court has ruled in favour of demolishing a Palestinian Bedouin village in the occupied West Bank, despite a campaign by European governments to save it.
Campaigners said the hearing had been the final appeal open to the village of Khan al-Ahmar, located close to several Israeli settlements east of Jerusalem.
It was unclear when the demolition of the village, home to about 180 residents, would take place.
In its ruling on Thursday, the court said it found “no reason to intervene in the decision of the minister of defence to implement the demolition orders issued against the illegal structures in Khan al-Ahmar”.
The residents would be relocated elsewhere, it added, in a move critics say amounts to forcible transfer.
The court ruled that the village was built without the relevant building permits.
Such permits are nearly impossible to obtain for Palestinians in Israeli-controlled areas of the West Bank.
“This verdict takes away the absolute minimal protection the Bedouin communities received until recently from the court,” Shlomo Lecker, the lawyer representing the village, said in a statement.
“By any standard of international humanitarian law, the verdict is an approval by the Israeli court of a crime against humanity.”
The decision was likely to be met with anger by European governments, which had been fighting to save the village.
Last week the head of the British consulate-general in Jerusalem visited the village and said in a video clip published online that the planned demolition was a “matter of great concern for the UK and indeed for the European Union”.
Earlier on Thursday, Israel’s defence minister, Avigdor Lieberman, announced 2,500 new settlement units in the West Bank. All settlements are considered illegal under international law.
The High Court of Justice ruled on Thursday night that the West Bank Palestinian Beduin herding village of Khan al-Ahmar and its adjacent school can be demolished.
“The court has washed its hand of the Beduin,” the village’s attorney Shlomo Lecker told The Jerusalem Post after the receiving the written verdict.
The ruling ends a nine-year legal battle for the 52 families that live in the small village of shacks and tents, perched on a small hillside off of Route 1 near the Ma’aleh Adumim and Kfar Adumim settlements.
Many of the families that live there belong to the Jahalin tribe that originally lived in the Negev until Israel relocated them to the Ma’aleh Adumim area in the early 1950s.
On Thursday, the court upheld a plan by the state to relocate the families to an area called Jahalin West, located near the town of Abu Dis, just outside of Jerusalem.
In its ruling, the justices said that the key issue here was that the construction was clearly illegal.
The case of the school and the village has garnered international attention.
Last week, a European Union delegation composed of officials stationed in Jerusalem and Ramallah visited the village.
“The EU heads of missions are deeply concerned” about the pending demolition, the EU said, adding that it was particularly concerned about the fate of the school, which services 170 children from five nearby communities.
“Several structures in the community, including the school, have been funded by the EU or EU member states. A demolition of the school would severely impact on Palestinian children’s right to education,” it said.
“Displacing the community would be in contravention with Israel’s obligations as an occupying power under international humanitarian law,” the EU added.
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