[News] Thousands of Palestinians to be Forcibly Moved for Settlement Expansion

[Anti-Imperialist News]

  Thousands of Palestinians to be Forcibly Moved for Settlement Expansion

author Tuesday September 16, 2014 09:07author by Alternative Information 
Center (AIC)
*http://www.imemc.org/article/69143*

    Israel is planning to forcibly transfer thousands of Palestinian
    Bedouins from their West Bank communities into a designated township
    to free up land for settlement expansion. Local and international
    groups are urging world leaders to pressure Israel to stop this
    violation of Palestinian rights. 

The Israeli government publicized, last week, six plans to move 
Palestinian Bedouins out of their communities around Jericho, Ramallah, 
and Jerusalem. The plans include moving Bedouins out of the politically 
sensitive area referred to as the Jerusalem Periphery or "E1," where 
Israel has long-intended to demolish 23 Bedouin villages in order to 
expand and link settlements. Settlement expansion in this area would cut 
the West Bank in two, further disrupting movement and social and 
economic ties between major Palestinian cities and limiting the little 
access Palestinians in the West Bank have to Jerusalem.

All of the Palestinian Bedouin communities slated for transfer are 
located in Area C, the 60 percent of the West Bank where Israel 
maintains full civil and military control. There are already around 
341,000 Israeli settlers living in more than 100 settlements throughout 
Area C. Although Area C is within the internationally recognized 1967 
borders of the occupied Palestinian territory, Israel only allows 
Palestinians to build on 1 percent of it.

International humanitarian organisations have noted that this lack of 
authority to build makes Palestinians vulnerable to home demolition, 
displacement, and forcible transfer and limits their ability to realize 
their rights to water, to adequate shelter, to education, health, and to 
livelihood.

Over 40 local and international agencies have called on world leaders to 
pressure Israel to cancel these plans.

In recent months, the government of Israel has used coercive tactics to 
heighten the pressure on Palestinian Bedouin communities, issuing 
eviction orders and demolishing homes and livelihood structures. Aid 
agencies report that Israel has also obstructed them from delivering 
assistance to these communities, including by seizing and destroying 
emergency shelters that international donors provided for families whose 
homes were demolished and confiscating a swing-set and a slide for a 
Bedouin school.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) 
reports that Israel has already demolished more than 350 Palestinian 
homes or livelihood structures in Area C in 2014, while demolitions in 
the Jerusalem periphery and E1 area have hit a five-year high, 
displacing 170 Bedouins, 91 of whom are children.

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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