After four years of relative calm, Palestinians in Khan al-Ahmar in the occupied West Bank once again hear Israeli settlers march in the distance, drowned out only by the sound of heavy demolition vehicles rolling behind them.
Protesters streaming up the windswept hills east of Jerusalem interrupted Maha Ali’s breakfast.
Palestinian chants in support of their Bedouin community, Khan el-Ahmar in the West Bank, which is under threat of annihilation by the Israeli army since it lost its legal protection more than four years ago, drowned out birdsong and sheep bleating.
Although last week’s solidarity rally was meant to support the village, it alarmed Ali. Israeli politicians gathered on the opposite hill in a counter-protest, calling for the immediate evacuation of Khan al-Ahmar.
Why are they all here again? Something happened?” Eli asked her sister, looking at the crowd of TV reporters. “Four years of silence, and now this chaos again.”
The long-standing dispute over Khan al-Ahmar has returned to the focus of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with the deadline for the law approaching, and new far-right Israeli ministers are pushing the government to honor a Supreme Court-sanctioned 2018 commitment to wipe out an off-map village. Israel claims that the village, which is home to about 200 Palestinians and has an EU-funded school, was built illegally on government land.
For Palestinians, Khan al-Ahmar is symbolic of the latest phase of a decades-long conflict, as thousands of Palestinians fight for Israel’s permission to build a 60% occupied West Bank that is completely controlled by the Israeli military.
After a spate of violence last week, including the deadliest Israeli raid in the West Bank in two decades and the deadliest Palestinian attack on civilians in Jerusalem since 2008, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded on Saturday with a promise to fortify Jewish settlements in the territory. controlled by Israel. part of the West Bank where little land is allocated to the Palestinians.
tearing down the dream
Competition for land is playing out in the southern hills of Hebron, where the Supreme Court has ordered the expulsion of thousands of Palestinians in an area known as Masafer Yatta and throughout.
In unsanctioned Palestinian villages — without direct access to Israeli electricity, running water or sewerage — residents watch helplessly as Israeli authorities tear down houses, issue evacuation orders, and expand settlements, reshaping the landscape of the territory they dream of calling their state.
Last year, Israeli authorities demolished 784 Palestinian buildings in the West Bank due to lack of permits, the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem said. The army is slowly demolishing houses, the group said, not wanting to risk the general condemnation that would result from leveling an entire village.
The news of the impending mass eviction of Khan al-Ahmar four years ago caused widespread backlash. Since then, the government has stalled, asking the court for more time due to international pressure and repeatedly stalled elections in Israel.
“They say the bulldozers will come tomorrow, next month, next year,” Ali, 40, said from her metal-topped barn where she can see the red-roofed houses in the fast-growing settlement of Kfar Adumim. “Our life has come to a standstill.”
On Wednesday, the Israeli government is expected to respond to a petition by the pro-settlement group Regavim, in which it asks the Supreme Court why Khan al-Ahmar has not yet been destroyed. Residents fear the brakes may fail now that Israel has the most right-wing government in history.
Regavim co-founder Bezalel Smotrich is currently Israel’s ultra-nationalist finance minister. As part of a controversial coalition deal, he was given control of the Israeli military body that oversees construction and demolition in Israeli-administered parts of the West Bank.
At a cabinet meeting last week, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir demanded that Khan al-Ahmar be demolished “just like the defense minister decided to destroy a Jewish outpost” illegally built in the West Bank.
“It’s not just about Khan al-Ahmar, it’s about the future of Judea and Samaria,” Julius Edelstein, chairman of the parliamentary committee on foreign affairs and defense, said during a visit to the village last week, using the biblical names for the West Bank.
Khan al-Ahmar’s leader, Eid Abu Khamis, 56, said anxiety had returned to his group of shacks. “They want to free the land and give it to the settlers,” he said.
The Bedouins have made Khan al-Ahmar their home since at least the 1970s, although some, such as Ali and Abu Khamis, say their parents lived there before.
Israel offered to relocate the villagers to another location a few miles away. Palestinians fear that Israel will use the strategic strip of land to cut off Jerusalem from Palestinian cities, rendering a future Palestinian state unviable.
“We are trying to counter this in every possible way,” said Ahmad Majdalani, the Palestinian Authority’s minister of social development. “The new government will be in direct confrontation with us and the international community.”
The US government has expressed concern about the planned evictions of Palestinians in the West Bank to the Israeli government, the US Office of Palestine said, referring to the cases of Khan al-Ahmar and Masafer Yatta in the so-called Area C.
The zone covers 60% of the territory of the West Bank, which is under the full control of Israel. This contrasts with the rest of the areas, including the Palestinian population centers, where the Palestinian Authority government exercises civilian and partial security control.
This demarcation of the various zones was part of the 1995 Oslo Peace Accords.
“How to keep people in jail”
It was a temporary agreement, lasting five years until a final peace agreement was reached.
“The intention has always been for the lion’s share of Area C to become part of a Palestinian state,” said Yossi Beilin, the author of these peace accords. “Otherwise it’s like keeping people in jail and eventually there would be an explosion.”
Almost three decades later, Area C is home to about half a million Israelis in dozens of settlements considered illegal under international law. The UN estimates that they live side by side with 180,000 to 300,000 Palestinians, who are almost never given building permits. When they build houses without permits, they will be razed to the ground by military bulldozers.
Netanyahu’s coalition partners have a very different vision for Area C than what was articulated in Oslo. They hope to increase the number of settlers, eliminate Palestinian construction and even annex territory. Last month, the Cabinet announced a freeze on Palestinian buildings as part of a crackdown on the PA.
Last May, the Israeli Supreme Court approved the expulsion of about 1,000 Palestinians from Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron, because the Israeli army declared it a restricted fire zone in the early 1980s.
There and in nearby camps, Palestinians describe an Israeli campaign to make their lives so miserable that they are forced to leave.
Last Wednesday, Lukba Jabari, 65, woke up to the sound of bulldozers in Khirbet Main, part of the Masafer Yatta district, where her grandparents were born. She and her 30 relatives ran outside to watch the army turn their home into rubble. The military destroyed three other shacks and her family’s water tanks.
That night, she said, they would sleep in their cars, next to the wreckage of their family life together. Last week, their neighbors offered some vacant rooms as temporary shelter.
“This is our land,” Jabari said. “Nowhere to go.”
