Israel evicts Palestinian villagers for army drill

A Palestinian woman stands in front of the rubble of her home after it was demolished by municipality workers in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Al Tur yesterday.

Reuters/Hamra Checkpoint, West Bank

Israeli soldiers evicted several hundred Bedouins from a village in the occupied West Bank yesterday after the army declared the area a live-fire training zone.

The residents of Wadi al-Maleh, a village mostly inhabited by shepherds in the arid area bordering Jordan, had almost all left their homes by an evening curfew and retreated to neighbouring villages, Aref Daraghmeh, a local leader, told Reuters.

The displacement coincided with several demolitions of Arab properties in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which come as the US is trying to revive stalled peace.

In January, villagers received a similar eviction order and left without resisting, only to return after 48 hours. Almost all of their 90 buildings, including shelters for their animals, were demolished in 2010, local rights groups said.

Israeli soldiers prevented outsiders, including journalists, from entering the area, saying it was a “closed military zone”.

“It should be emphasised that these structures, located in closed military zones actively used by the IDF, are illegal in nature...the residents of these illegal structures have been requested in advance to vacate the premises voluntarily,” an Israeli Defence Forces spokesperson said.

“This drill is a part of the IDF’s pre-planned yearly exercise schedule,” the spokesperson said.

Wadi al-Maleh is located in “Area C”, a swath of land making up two-thirds of the West Bank under full Israeli control and where most Jewish settlements are located.

Half a million settlers live in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, territory captured in the 1967 Middle East War which Palestinians want for a future state.

Israeli army firing zones comprise 18% of the West Bank, roughly the same size of “Area A”, the land including major cities and towns which is under full Palestinian control.

According to the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 5,000 Palestinians in 38 herding communities live on army firing zones, along with several sprawling Jewish settlements and farms.

Besides Wadi al-Maleh, 12 Bedouin villages throughout the length of the Jordan Valley have received eviction orders since 1999, according to the Association for Human Rights in Israel.

The International Court of Justice and most governments deem Jewish settlements in the West Bank illegal. Israel disputes this and cites Biblical and historical links to the land.

Israeli authorities razed two family homes in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Al Tur yesterday morning, displacing 18 Palestinians who failed to acquire elusive building permits, local officials said.

The army also demolished a well near a Palestinian refugee camp south of the city of Hebron and cleared an agricultural area of dozens of olive trees east of Bethlehem, according to Palestinian government media.

Israeli officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment on those incidents.

Christians urge Pope to oppose barrier

AFP/Bethlehem

Palestinian Christians near Bethlehem yesterday urged Pope Francis to speak up against an Israeli decision to build its controversial separation barrier on a route they say would cut off their community.

“We cry to your Holiness with a feeling of despair and urgency in order to keep alive our hope that justice and peace is still possible,” said an open letter from the Christians of Beit Jala, a town near the West Bank city of Bethlehem.

“The Israeli military occupation that has already started building the ‘famous wall’ annexing Palestinian land... (is) separating Bethlehem as well as other regions from Jerusalem and our holy places,” it said.

The letter came as Israel’s President Shimon Peres was due to arrive in Italy on a three-day visit during which he would meet Pope Francis.

“We respectfully ask you to make use of this meeting to pass a strong message regarding the people of Palestine, and particularly the case of Beit Jala’s Cremisan land,” it said.

The letter added: “We need concrete actions in order to end Israel’s impunity so we can live with dignity in our free state... Your holiness, your election brought us hope that things would change. We are still hopeful.”

An Israeli court ruled last week in favour of constructing the so-called separation barrier through the 170-hectare Cremisan Valley, where many of Beit Jala’s Christians work on the land and its vineyards.

The barrier’s planned route would cut them off from the valley, and would effectively separate it from Jerusalem, which is 5km away, locals say.

The International Court of Justice ruled in 2004 that parts of the barrier were illegal and should be torn down.

In the Cremisan area, the route of the barrier deviates sharply from the Green Line, the internationally-accepted line marking the divide between Israel and the territories it captured in the 1967 Six-Day War.

But Israel’s defence ministry insists it protects Israelis and that the route is determined by “specific security considerations” of the area.

“Building the Wall in the Bethlehem area it’s not only a violation of international law... it is also an attack against Palestinian social fabric and Palestinian Christian presence,” said Nabil Shaath, a member of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party.