A US-based human rights group called on Israel Tuesday to stop house demolitions and forced evictions of Palestinians living in the Jordan Valley region of the occupied West Bank.
Amnesty International said the Israeli Army has increased efforts to forcefully evict over 100 villagers, most of them children from the small towns of Humsa and Hadidiyya, north-east of the West Bank.
“The inhabitants of Hadidiyya were forced to move to Humsa, about 1 kilometer away, last April, after the Israeli Army threatened to destroy their homes and animal pens,” the statement said.
On May 29, Israeli forces delivered another warning to villagers in Humsa, ordering them to immediately leave the area.
Amnesty said the villagers have since been constantly harassed by Israeli forces and been living in fear that their tents, shacks and animal pens would be demolished at any moment.
The official reason given by the Israeli Army is that the area is a “closed military area” from which Palestinians are barred Amnesty said, while Israeli settlements, illegal under international law, continue to expand a few hundred meters away.
Amnesty expressed concern that Humsa and Hadidiya residents “are facing the demolition of their homes, and called for the … orders to be rescinded.”
It also called on Israeli authorities to suspend house demolitions and forced evictions in the West Bank “until the law is amended to bring it into line with international standards.”
Amnesty cited the “extremely” difficulty conditions in which the villagers are forced to live.
“They are denied access to water and their movements are increasingly restricted by military checkpoints and blockades that prevent them from using the main roads in the area,” it said.
In a mid-July visit to the area, an Amnesty delegate found that the villagers have to fetch water from 20 kilometers away, while in Israeli settlements nearby sprinklers were wastefully watering the fields in the afternoon sun, the statement said.
Furthermore, the villagers “are forbidden from building permanent structures, and so are forced to live in tents and shacks, which provide little shelter from the extreme heat in the summer and bitter cold in the winter, and are not allowed to use the wells and the roads in the area, as these are for the exclusive use of the nearby Israeli settlements,” the statement said.
Villagers told the delegate that Israeli forces patrolling the area often threaten to destroy their homes and arrest them if they do not leave.
Amnesty called on Israel to lift restrictions imposed on villagers “in particular for them to have access to water, electricity and other essential services, and for them to be allowed to move freely within the Jordan Valley, and between there and the rest of the West Bank.”
Amnesty said planning and building regulations in the Jordan Valley and elsewhere in the Occupied Palestinian Territories must be placed “solely with the local Palestinian communities.”
