Israel continues policy of forcibly transferring Palestinians: Yesterday, another massive demolition at Khirbet Humsah; today, troops began extensive training among homes and fields of Masafer Yatta residents

2 February 2021

Israel has taken two unusally broad measures this week as part of its ongoing efforts to forcibly transfer Palestinian communities in order to take over their land:

The Jordan Valley

Yesterday, Monday, 1 February 2021, Israeli forces confiscated most of the residential structures and livestock pens in the community of Khirbet Humsah. The community was already demolished on 3 November 2020, while the world was focused on the US elections. Yesterday, the Civil Administration dismantled and confiscated the following equipment:

Thirteen tents that were home to 11 families, numbering 74 members, including 41 minors; two of the families had relocated temporarily to the Furush Beit Dajan area after their homes were demolished in November 2020.
Five shacks, one not yet built, and eight tents, all used for livestock.

According to community residents, Civil Administration personnel arrived in the morning, before the confiscation began, and ordered them to relocate to the area of ‘Ein Shibli, west of the al-Hamrah Checkpoint. The forces then dismantled their tents and possessions and transferred them to the checkpoint, notifying the residents that they could get them back if they undertook to relocate to the designated site. After the residents refused to comply, the equipment was confiscated and put in Civil Administration storage.

To cover up the forcible transfer, military spokesmen tried to create the impression that the residents had “voluntarily agreed” to leave the area after “dialogue.” Yet when one side – Israel – has all power and can threaten defenseless Palestinians with demolition orders, bulldozers and weapons, consent is not on the cards. Rather, it is an act of coercion and violence by Israel's apartheid regime, which advances the principle of Jewish supremacy by geographically and demographically engineering space.

Military forces train near Khirbet Jenbah, bordering Masafer Yatta, 2 Feb. 2021. Photo credit: Naser Nawaj’ah, B’Tselem

The South Hebron Hills

Today, 2 February 2021, Israel launched a large-scale military maneuver set to last two to three days, in areas it has declared firing zones in the South Hebron Hills. The military has not trained in the area for at least seven years.

As in other parts of the West Bank, these areas were declared “firing zones” in order to drive local residents out of their homes and take over their land. Unlike the military, the local settlement council made no attempt to disguise the intention to expel Palestinians for alleged security reasons. In a statement sent to Jewish residents, it welcomed the training as “another way to increase governance and control over open space and to enforce law and order.”

After years of no military training in the area, the decision to conduct a broad maneuver there is part of Israel's ongoing campaign to forcibly transfer Palestinians. The sudden urge to train in Masafer Yatta (South Hebron Hills) is hard to detach from the fact that a new US administration has just taken office. Is the Israeli government testing the waters to see how far it can proceed with its plans before being held accountable under the current administration?

The people who came up with the idea of expelling residents on the pretext of “military training” will not suddenly grow a conscience or stop the expulsion. Yet the international community, and especially the new US administration, can – and should – make it clear to Israel that these actions will come at a significant cost.

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Planning Policy in the West Bank

Israel commits a crime and paints Palestinians as lawbreakers: The homes of 44 Palestinians, including 22 children, were demolished yesterday in the West Bank

As part of Israel’s efforts to take over more land in the West Bank, authorities yesterday destroyed the homes of 44 Palestinians (22 of them minors) and cut off entire communities from the water supply. Some of the homes demolished yesterday were still under construction and not yet occupied. These demolitions are the extreme manifestation of Israel’s policy designed to empty entire areas of the West Bank of their Palestinian residents. Other methods routinely used by Israel are conducting military training in residential and farming areas, denying Palestinians access to land, prohibiting construction, preventing connection to basic infrastructure and confiscating property. With a month left before the end of the year, Israel has demolished the homes of more than 900 Palestinians in 2020 (the figure includes the West Bank and East Jerusalem), compared with 677 in all of 2019. Ramallah Area In the village of a-Lubban al-Gharbiyah, Ramallah District, the Civil Administration demolished the frame of a building still under construction (flooring and columns) set to house a family of eight, including six children. A shack owned and used by another resident as a car repair shop was also demolished. Jordan Valley In Fasayil a-Tahta in the northern Jordan Valley, the Civil Administration: Confiscated two frames for shacks set to house an extended family of seven, including two children. The structures were donated by a humanitarian aid organization after the Civil Administration demolished their residential shacks in previous months. Demolished two shacks housing a family of ten, including four children, as well as a kitchen, an outhouse, livestock pens, a fence and an electrical grid. Demolished eight shacks used by two families, including an outhouse, an animal feed storeroom, a stable, a chicken coop and communal cooking ovens. It also destroyed animal feed. In the Tell a-Samadi community northwest of al-Jiftlik, the Civil Administration confiscated a shack housing a couple as well as a structure used as an outhouse and a water tank donated to the couple by a humanitarian aid organization after forces demolished their shack, outhouse and plastic water tank on 21 October 2020. Masafer Yatta (South Hebron Hills) In Khirbet a-Rakeez, the Civil Administration demolished two residential structures housing a family of six, including three children, and an agricultural structure used by another family in the community. In Khirbet a-Sarurah, the Civil Administration demolished an outhouse owned by a member of the community. In Khirbet Khilet a-Dabe’, two residential structures still under construction were demolished. They were meant to house two families numbering a total of 11 people, including seven children. A structure housing a toilet and a kitchen was also demolished. In Maghayir al-‘Abid, two farming structures and an outhouse owned by a local resident were demolished. Civil Administration personnel cut a 2-kilometer water pipe servicing the communities of al-Fakhit, a-Safai, Maghayir al-‘Abid and a-Taban. The water main cost close to 100,000 Euro, and it was donated by humanitarian organizations. The Civil Administration had already destroyed the water main into Masafer Yatta in February of 2019. It has been restored since, but in October this year, the Civil Administration damaged an internal water pipe servicing the communities of Maghayir al-‘Abid and Khirbet al-Majaz. In Khirbet Jinba, a water tank and part of a wire fence were destroyed, and four olive trees were uprooted. As of late November 2020, at least 919 Palestinians have lost their homes, including at least 460 minors. By comparison, in all of 2019, 677 Palestinians lost their homes, while the numbers for 2018 and 2017 are 397 and 521, respectively. Israel also demolished 330 non-residential structures and facilities over the course of 2020, including humanitarian infrastructure such as cisterns and water and electricity infrastructure that are essential. The demolitions were conducted, once again, just ahead of a significant winter weather system and during a pandemic. Earlier this month, on the eve of the US elections, Israel destroyed the entire community of Khirbet Humsah in the Jordan Valley, in the largest such demolition in a decade. Israel persists in this policy of forcible transfer, bolstered by judgments delivered by its courts, particularly the Supreme Court, and a flaccid response from the international community. Demolitions manifest just one aspect of this criminal policy that will not end until rebuke and demands for compensation are replaced by truly holding Israel accountable for its actions. Attempts to address this policy by other means have ended in failure - failure whose ruins are scattered throughout the West Bank.

26 November 2020

Khirbet Humsah residents amidst the ruins of their community. 4 November 2020. Photo by Sarit Michaeli, B'Tslem.

Communities Facing Expulsion

Hagai El-Ad's address at the European Parliament Committee on Human Rights, 16 Nov. 2020

Two weeks ago, on November 3rd, Israel carried out one of its biggest demolition operations in a decade. Khirbet Humsah, an entire Palestinian community in the northern Jordan valley, was demolished within hours. Seventy-four people were left homeless, 41 of them children. Tens of structures, people’s homes and livelihood, were destroyed. Humsah is not alone. For years, Israel has been targeting dozens of Palestinian communities throughout the occupied West Bank. It is a criminal policy of forcible transfer. Israel is turning the lives of these communities into a prolonged nightmare, in order to force them to give up and leave. A nightmare of years of hardship without running water or a connection to the power grid, of home demolitions, of having to repeatedly vacate your home so Israeli troops can train on your land, of ongoing violence by settlers backed by Israeli security forces. And sometimes, all this organized state violence is condensed into a few dark hours, as happened in Humsah. But whether it takes years or mere hours, it is a war crime. The European Union has responded by calling this a “regrettable trend” and saying that “such developments constitute an impediment towards the two-state solution”. Let me be clear: Israel knows, from decades of experience, that the worst it will have to deal with is such inconsequential expressions of concern. Israeli bulldozers on their way to demolish the next home of a defenseless Palestinian are driving on roads paved with such empty rhetoric. Every time euphemisms are used instead of calling crimes by their proper name, it emboldens Israel to continue its policies of oppression, dispossession, and violence against Palestinians. International acquiescence, decorated by meaningless talk of a “two-state solution”, is the backbone of the inherently undemocratic one-state reality we live in. Everyone knows – in European capitals and in this parliament – that more statements will not stop the next demolition. When the lines have nothing in them, Israel doesn’t even have to read between them to recognize a green light to continue oppressing Palestinians. Without real consequences, that green light will continue to shine. Humsah was not the first. And as long as impunity is the norm, it will not be the last. Everywhere in the Jordan valley, Palestinian communities face similar predicaments, while at the same time Israel established more and more settlement points. In Jerusalem, Palestinian families are forced out of their homes so Jewish settlers can move in. A few kilometers to the east, the community of Khan al-Ahmar is awaiting its turn. In the South Hebron Hills, Palestinian communities fear, after struggling for 20 years to stay on their land, the forthcoming ruling by Israel’s High Court of Justice. A court so just that it has never ruled against Israel’s Kafkaesque planning regime in the West Bank – a regime tailored to forbidding Palestinian development while issuing permits to build and expand Israeli settlements. By legitimizing all this, Israel’s highest court functions as a key enabler of flagrantly illegal policies meant to forcibly transfer Palestinians. All this has been happening for decades, and continues also after Israel recently set aside – at least for the time being – its plan to formally annex parts of the West Bank. De-jure or de-facto, the formal status of Palestinian land has never stopped Israel from promoting its interests at the expense of Palestinians’ rights. Clearly, if Israel cared about international law or respecting human rights, it would not have built more than 250 settlements in which some 600,000 Israelis already live. Does Europe really need an announcement of de-jure annexation to see reality for what it is? How many years of prolonged occupation, how many explicit statements by Israeli leaders, how many infrastructure projects, how many settlers does it take for Europe to wake up to the reality of Israel’s permanent control of everything and everyone between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean sea? A century of occupation? A million settlers? What is it that the EU is waiting for? Consequences for human rights violations can be introduced through European foreign policy, by effectively using Europe’s considerable leverage. Clearly, the decision to not do so is a political choice. It undermines Europe’s commitment to human rights and weakens the rules-based international order. It normalizes oppression and dehumanizes Palestinians, because – apparently – no one has to be held accountable for their permanent subjugation. Not when an entire community is razed to the ground, not when hundreds of demonstrators are shot with live bullets along the Gaza fence, not when dozens of families were wiped out in their own homes in the massive attack on Gaza in 2014. Not now, not ever. Europe has international responsibilities. It is the most significant international stakeholder committed, at its core, to democracy and to the rule of law. Grave, systemic human rights violations have been going on for years, in broad daylight, in Europe’s neighborhood. Put the empty rhetoric aside. See reality for what it is. Stand up for the universal values enshrined in law in the aftermath of the Second World War. Protect the rights of Palestinians. The time is now.

16 November 2020

Agriculture

Acting the Landlord

60% of the West Bank is designated Area C, under exclusive Israeli control. It is home to 180,000 Palestinians and includes most West Bank land reserves. Israel, citing “state lands” or “firing zones”, largely prohibits Palestinian construction. Israel’s planning policy ignores local needs: refuses to recognize villages or draft plans; blocks development and infrastructure hook-ups; and demolishes homes. Thousands are in danger of expulsion for living in firing zones or “illegal” communities. Israel has appropriated most water sources and restricts Palestinian access to them.

4 June 2013