Israeli army destroys the house and farm of the al-Rajabi family - photo by CPT

Two CPTers arrived at the main road near the house and saw six military jeeps, three police vehicles, and three intelligence service vehicles at the site. Initially, the Israeli authorities prevented CPTers from approaching the scene. When they asked soldiers why they were demolishing the farm, a soldier replied, “Because we are the army.”

From the place where they could view the demolition, the CPTers could see Caterpillar and Hyundai bulldozers destroying a farm building and a caravan (mobile home) in which the family lived. The children of the family came to the main road and one of the boys told them that he could take them through the fields to get a closer view of the destruction of his father’s farm.

By now, the two bulldozers had started to demolish a large corrugated iron barn where the family kept their cows; it destroyed milking machines and other equipment worth over 8000 USD in the process.

The farmer told CPTers, “Destroying my home…I can rebuild and while I am rebuilding I can stay with another family member but destroying my farm—it’s not only destroying my livelihood but also the livelihoods of three other families; our farm is our bread and butter.”

The farmer has two wives and fifteen children to support and now he is worried how he will manage financially. He was looking at his one hundred cows, who were sitting in the oppressive heat. The farmer said that if they were not milked soon, they would die.

On May Day, all Israeli government offices are closed; the Israeli military evidently was not observing this national holiday when it destroyed the livelihoods of these four families.

Source: IMEMC

Over the past few days settlers led by Arieh King have been harassing Palestinian residents of Beit Hanina where, according to King, settlers will “very soon” take over four houses, plus an additional two houses in the Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, where violent nighttime evictions aided by the Israeli police have become commonplace. The immediate target of window-breaking, curses, violent encounters and now a police search of the home “for weapons” is the Natche family of Beit Hanina.

King is the front-man for Irving Moskowitz, a wealthy owner of bingo casinos in Hawaiian Gardens, a poor Latino community near Los Angeles, who is bankrollingsome 17 settlements around East Jerusalem to “buffer” the Old City and “Judaize” East Jerusalem (see the StopMoskowitz website.) A friend and benefactor of Netanyahu, Moskovitch was behind the opening of the tunnels under the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem in 1996 that resulted in the deaths of 80 Palestinian protesters.

Police raid the Natche family home in Beit Hanina, ostensibly searching for weapons. The Natch home is under threat of eviction by settlers. Photo courtesy of Felizitas Hoffmann

The Moskowitz/King strategy is to establish settlements in the heart of Palestinian neighborhoods, often in houses acquired by dubious and violent means. Among the settlements established or on the way are the City of David (Silwan), just below the al-Aqsa mosque; Ma’ale Zeitim and Ma’ale David in the Ras-el-Amud quarter on the southern side of the Mount of Olives; Beit Hoshen on the Mount of Olives, where several Palestinian families were violently evicted from their homes and which flies an enormous Israeli flag; Beit Orot, on the northern part of the Mount of Olives, where last year Mike Huckabee laid the foundations for an expanded settlement; the Shepherds Hotel and Sheikh Jarrah, now renamed Shimon Hatzadik; a plot in the village of Anata to the east of the Hebrew university; and now the homes in Beit Hanina.

While King, Moskowitz and other organized settler groups frame their taking of Palestinian homes as “reclaiming” Jewish properties from before 1948, Palestinians are legally prevented from even approaching the courts to reclaim their lost properties in “west” Jerusalem– the homes, businesses and lands that once comprised 40% of the now all-Jewish part of the city. King works through a company called The Israel Land Fund that, according to its website, “is dedicated to enable all Jews (Israeli and non-Israeli citizens) to own a part of Israel. It strives to ensure that Jewish land is once again reclaimed and in Jewish hands. House by house, lot by lot, the Israel Land Fund is ensuring the land of Israel stays in the hands of the Jewish people forever.”

Just how sleazy the settlement racket is can be gleaned from The Israel Land Fund’s website. It employs, we learn, three full-time employees who “are well versed in Arabic, and all served as officers in the Israel Defense Force.” It adds menacingly and tellingly: “These skills are frequently called into play in their dealings with Arab sellers and with the local population in areas that the Fund is active.” The Fund’s employees are proficient in English, we are told, “since the Fund’s main proponents are from the English speaking public.”

The “process” of acquiring an Arab property, described on the website, also offers insights into King’s methods. First, “the buyers [i.e. Jews] will be shown properties or land they may be interested in purchasing, without directly identifying the property. This is to prevent the possibility of over-exposure of the property [read: the neighbors, or even the people living in the home who think they own it, might find out] which may result in the cancellation or withdrawal of the property by the seller [not necessarily the owners nor the people who believe the home belongs to them] or cause damage to the deal.” Only when “the buyers” are sufficiently committed will The Fund then conduct negotiations on their behalf. “It is only at this stage, once the ILF is convinced of the seriousness and authenticity of the buyers, that the ILF will reveal the seller and enable the buyer to visit the property.”

The “settlement business” cannot function, of course, without extensive official support. Settler groups and their lawyers are able to keep even weak or non-existent cases in court for years with the help of their deep pockets and compliant judges. Palestinians, even those with strong cases, simply cannot afford the expenses of litigation. If a Palestinian or his children run afoul with the law, especially in cases of alleged stone-throwing, the settlers, through their lawyers and sympathetic police, can extricate the person – for a price, often his home. The municipality is enlisted either to threaten families who are targeted for various building violations with fines or to issue demolition orders against their homes, and building permits elsewhere are used as inducement to get Palestinians to leave targeted areas, such as Silwan.

Deals are also struck. Rumors are that the Natche home in Beit Hanina will be offered to a poor Palestinian family in the Old City whose home is small and cramped but is strategically located for purposes of judaization. Poor and vulnerable families are enticed to sell for exorbitant sums (hence we don’t want to “over-expose” a potential property), or houses are “bought” from an absentee relative in some far-off country and the family evicted in the middle of the night without even knowing their home was sold. (Good lawyers can solve any legal complications.)

So from the Natche family to the judaization of Jerusalem, compliments of a California bingo parlor-cum-casino operated on the backs of low-income Latinos and English-speaking Jewish “buyers”.

As its name suggests, Beit Arabiya belongs to Arabiya Shawamreh, her husband Salim, and their seven children — a Palestinian family whose home has been demolished four times by the Israeli authorities and rebuilt each time by ICAHD’s Palestinian, Israeli, and international peace activists before being demolished again last night.

At around 11p.m. Monday, a bulldozer accompanied by a contingent of heavily armed Israeli soldiers appeared on the Anata hills to promptly demolish Beit Arabiya, along with residential and agricultural structures in the nearby Jahalin Bedouin compound. Three family homes were demolished along with numerous animal pens; 20 people including young children were displaced, left exposed to the harsh desert environment. While standing in solidarity with Palestinians, ICAHD staff and activists were repeatedly threatened by Israeli soldiers. ICAHD Co-Director Itay Epshtain was beaten and sustained minor injuries.

Beit Arabiya was issued a demolition order by Israeli authorities back in 1994, following Israel’s refusal to grant a building permit. It has since been demolished four times and rebuilt by ICAHD activists four times. Last night’s fifth demolition came following a reissue of the demolition order last Thursday. ICAHD Director Dr. Jeff Halper, standing astride the ruins, vowed to support Salim and Arabiya in rebuilding their home. “We shall rebuild, we must rebuild as an act of political defiance of the occupation and protracted oppression of Palestinians,” said Halper.

Beit Arabiya has become a symbol of resistance to the Judaization of the Occupied West Bank and Israeli demolition policy. “ICAHD is as determined as always to rebuild [Beit Arabiya] and [persevere] in its struggle to bring about justice and peace,” added Halper.
Salim and Arabiya, along with their neighbors and friends, stood last night and watched as this tragedy unfolded once again. Arabiya and Salim have dedicated their home as a center for peace in memory of Rachel Corrie and Nuha Sweidan, two women (an American and a Palestinian) who died resisting home demolitions in Gaza. In the past decade ICAHD has hosted numerous visitors at Beit Arabiya and based its annual rebuilding camp at the house, rebuilding 185 demolished Palestinian homes.

Earlier this month, ICAHD extended an invitation to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing to visit Beit Arabiya during her country visit to the Occupied Palestinian Territory scheduled for later in the month. “It is our hope that while we cannot extend the same hospitality to the Special Raportueor, Prof. Raquel Rolnik will visit the ruins of Beit Arabiya and report on the utter cruelty and illegality of Israeli policies and practices, and that members of the international community will follow in her footsteps,” said ICAHD Co-Director Itay Epshtain.

For more information and coordination of visits to Beit Arabiya, please contact Itay Epshtain at itay@icahd.org or +972-54-2623306

Slider Photo Credit: Ryan Rodrick Beiler/MCC

The destructive action left twenty people homeless, including six children. Since 1967 around 2,000 homes have been demolished in East Jerusalem, according to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). The Israeli authorities demolished more than 670 East Jerusalem homes between 2000 and 2008. The number of outstanding demolition orders for East Jerusalem is estimated at up to 20,000.

ICAHD estimates that about 25,000 Palestinian homes in the Occupied Palestinian Territories were demolished between 1967 and 2010.

(reposted from Electronic Intifada)

Click here for more information.

ICAHD Co-Director Itay Epshtain and ICAHD UK Director Linda Ramsden met with the Special Rapporteur staff in Geneva earlier this month, to ask of the Rapporteur to convey his grave concern of imminent displacement, and deliver the recent publication “Nowhere Left to Go: Arab al-Jahalin Bedouin Ethnic Displacement.”

Please visit the ICAHD website for more information.

ICAHD’s Jeff Halper Speaking to the Tribunal

In the case of the Israel’s 44-year Occupation, such an initiative is certainly called for. Despite the Palestinians’ acceptance of the two-state solution in 1988 and the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002, in which the Arab League unanimously agreed to make peace with Israel and integrate it into the region, Israel refuses to end its settlement building or the construction of other massive, irreversible “facts on the ground,” such as a web of Israeli-only highways linking the settlements to Israel proper; the construction of a “separation barrier” twice as high as the Berlin Wall and five times longer, snaking deep into Palestinian territory; and the annexation of East Jerusalem.

Mohammad Khatib, a Palestinian from Bil’in, speaking to the Tribunal

Indeed, it is likely that Israel’s facts on the ground have eliminated the two-state solution. Israel, however, which considers the West Bank as “Judea and Samaria” – an integral part of its territory – will not even contemplate a one-state solution. It is the permanent confining of the Palestinian population to tiny enclaves in the Occupied Territory under institutionalized Israeli domination and control that leads to the charge that Israel has constructed an apartheid regime. And since, as many expert witnesses testified before the Tribunal, the human and national rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel are also limited by law, regulations, and a hostile political and social climate, the reality of apartheid extends inside Israel itself.

The “crime of apartheid” is defined in international law as “inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them” – “racial group” being extended to “any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, color, descent, national, or ethnic origin.” The Tribunal took the four Articles of the Convention Against the Crime of Apartheid and invited expert witnesses to systematically address them. (The Israeli government was invited to submit testimony as well but did not deign to even acknowledge the offer.)

The two days of testimony highlighted the systematic oppression of the Palestinians. Some of the details – of restrictions on life and movement in the Jordan Valley, for instance, or the extent of Israel’s security services in vetting teachers and principals in Arab public schools inside Israel – surprised and shocked even witnesses who had worked for years in the field. My own testimony on house demolitions revealed that three times more homes are demolished inside Israel (all of Arab citizens, of course) than in the Occupied Territory.

In the end, the jury found ample grounds to conclude that “Israel subjects the Palestinian people to an institutionalized regime of domination amounting to apartheid as defined under international law…. The Palestinians living under colonial military rule in the occupied Palestinian territory are subject to a particularly aggravated form of apartheid. Palestinian citizens of Israel, while entitled to vote, are not part of the Jewish nation as defined by Israeli law and are therefore excluded from the benefits of Jewish nationality and subject to systematic discrimination across the broad spectrum of recognized human rights. Irrespective of such differences, the Tribunal concludes that Israel’s rule over the Palestinian people, wherever they reside, collectively amounts to a single integrated regime of apartheid.” The Russell Tribunal calls on all the relevant actors – the state of Israel, the international community, and civil society itself – to end apartheid in Israel/Palestine and pave the way for a just peace between the Palestinian and Israeli peoples.

Read the findings:

• Executive summary  
• Full findings

Villagers sort through rubble after the demolition of a Bedouin community near Jerusalem.

The Palestinian-Bedouin communities living in the hills to the east of Jerusalem are at an exceedingly growing risk of forced ethnic displacement. The communities have been informed by the Israeli authorities that they have no option but to leave the area, as part of a larger plan (to begin as early as January 2012) to relocate Bedouin communities living in Area C (Jerusalem periphery, Jordan Valley, and south Hebron Hills), where Israel retains control over security as well as planning and zoning.

The Bedouin homes are currently located in an area that holds strategic significance for further expansion of illegal Israeli settlements. This includes the E1 plan, which foresees the expansion of Ma’ale Adumim, an illegal Israeli settlement, and its linkage to Judaized East Jerusalem and Jordan Valley settlements. If implemented, these plans, along with Barrier construction in the area, risk preventing Palestinian growth and development and disrupting the territorial contiguity of a future Palestinian state. The forced displacement of the Bedouin would also be detrimental to their semi-nomadic way of life. As available land shrinks, Bedouin refugees are faced with nowhere to go.

Meanwhile, the Arab al-Jahalin Bedouin are seeking ways to improve their general living conditions. Communities living in the area have appealed to local and international organizations to support projects that will contribute to improving their conditions, projects designed help the Bedouin to build sustainable livelihoods and resist forced ethnic displacement and the Israeli Occupation.

A copy of the complete publication is available here.

Fifteen army jeeps and a bulldozer showed up at the rural community, in the hills east of Jerusalem, and demolished five family homes, displacing 71 people, including some 60 children. ICAHD staff arrived at the community a few short hours after the demolition to find family members mourning the loss of their homes and property. Abu Khamis, a Khan al-Ahmar community activist, told ICAHD staff: “We will not be forced off our land; if Israel demolishes, we will rebuild.”

The Palestinian-Bedouin community of Khan al-Ahmar (Jerusalem periphery) is fighting for survival. The 180-strong community faces the threat of imminent displacement if the Israeli authorities demolish their homes and school as planned. This may well destroy the community, one of 20 in the area, who have become victims of creeping settlement expansion and ethnic cleansing.

The land the community lives on has been slated for the expansion of settlements in the Ma’ale Adumim municipal area, in the Jerusalem periphery, despite the community’s decades’ long presence. Israeli authorities see Khan al-Ahmar and the other Palestinian-Bedouin communities in the area, more than 2,300 people in all, as a hindrance to the planned expansion of Ma’ale Adumim, Kfar Adumim, and other surrounding illegal settlements, and to the construction of the West Bank wall which would de facto annex this strategically significant area to Israel, rendering a Palestinian state unviable.

The Khan al-Ahmar Jahalin School is the only school to provide primary education to children of the Arab al-Jahalin Bedouin tribe. Built in 2009 by Italian NGO Vento Di Terra (Wind of Earth) and local NGOs, the eco-friendly school, providing schooling for over 70 students, is slated for demolition.

If implemented, the Israeli development plans would be the culmination of years of settlement expansion at the expense of the Palestinian-Bedouin communities. Since 1991, when large parts of the communities’ living areas were integrated into the expanded boundaries of Ma’ale Adumim, Israeli policies have increased the pressure on the communities to leave their homes.

The recent house demolitions are part of an ongoing policy designed to forcefully transfer Bedouin of the Jerusalem periphery, as highlighted in the ICAHD publication Nowhere Left to Go: Arab al-Jahalin Bedouin Ethnic Displacement.

House demolitions, evictions, and property confiscations, exacerbated by settler harassment and the economic effects of movement restrictions, have left these communities struggling to make ends meet and living in fear.

ICAHD calls for an immediate end to the occupation of Palestinian Territory and to demolitions of Palestinian houses, schools, and infrastructure, which cause displacement and dispossession.

ICAHD calls for the transfer of powers and responsibilities related to the sphere of planning and zoning in the West Bank, including area C, to Palestinian jurisdiction in accordance with international law and bi-lateral agreements, so as to allow for a nondiscriminatory planning system to include community participation in all levels of the planning process.

ICAHD calls for a safe return of all families forcibly displaced to their homes and compensation for any harm they have suffered, including the destruction of land, homes, and property.