[News] Palestine - Half of Susiya to be Demolished after Ramadan

[Anti-Imperialist News]

  Half of Susiya to be Demolished after Ramadan

author Friday July 17, 2015 01:31author by IMEMC News & Agencies
*http://www.imemc.org/article/72270*

    Israeli authorities ordered the demolition of around half of the
    homes, in a village south of Hebron, to be carried out after
    Ramadan, Israeli watchdogs said on Wednesday.

Rabbis for Human Rights and B'Tselem said, in a statement, that pressure 
from Israeli settlers 
<http://www.imemc.org/newswire?topic=israelisettlement> had led to the 
decision to carry out demolition orders in the village of Khirbet Susiya 
after Ramadan, although a high court hearing regarding the case is 
currently scheduled for August 3.

The Israeli Civil Administration, the Israeli army, and the Coordination 
of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) office announced the 
demolition order to the villagers in a meeting, Sunday. Khirbet Susiya 
has been under imminent threat of demolition since May, when the Israeli 
High Court approved the demolition of the villagers' homes and tents and 
possible relocation of the villages around 300 Bedouin residents.

The court case has been ongoing since 2012, when residents of Khirbet 
Susiya applied for the Israeli Civil Administration to approve an 
outline plan for northern part of the village.

Susiya villagers reportedly built homes in 1986 on agricultural land 
they owned, after being evicted by Israel from their previous dwellings 
on land declared as an archaeological site.

Situated in Area C, an area covering 60 percent of the West Bank which 
is under full Israeli control, villagers of Khirbet Susiya must apply 
for construction permits from the Israeli Civil Administration 
<http://www.imemc.org/newswire?search_text=Civil+Administration&button=Search+%3E%3E>.

In practice only a handful of Palestinian applications for construction 
or expansion on existing structures are approved, with only six percent 
of Palestinian building permit requests granted by Israel between 2000 
and 2012.

Unable to get "legal" permission, Palestinians are faced with either 
leaving or building illegally.

Since 1988 Israeli forces have issued more than double the amount of 
demolition orders to Palestinians in Area C than they have to illegal 
Israeli settlements in the area.

Israeli settlers living illegally in the area according to international 
law already control over 300 hectares of Khirbet Susiya's land, B'Tselem 
reports.

Rabbis for Human Rights alleges that the newest threat is a form of 
coercion that aims to expel residents of the area already before the 
court hearing.

The head of the Susiya village council Jihad al-Nawajaa said the 
residents have been asked to be evacuated on the pretext that the 
village lacks sufficient infrastructure for living.

Meanwhile, the Israeli government provides the necessary services to the 
nearby Israeli settlement of Susiya. Last year Israel demolished 590 
Palestinian-owned structures in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, 
displacing 1,177 people, according to the UN Office for the Coordination 
of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

The upcoming demolition of Khirbet Susiya comes while member of Israel's 
right wing government are pushing a plan to forcibly relocate tens of 
thousands of Palestinian Bedouins.

Approved without any consultation with the Bedouin community, the plan 
would evict nearly 40,000 Bedouins from their villages and force them to 
live in concentrated areas that critics called "reservations." Israel 
currently refuses to recognize 35 Bedouin villages in the Negev, which 
collectively house nearly 90,000 people.
-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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