[News] Why Israel demolishes: Khan al-Ahmar representation of greater genocide

[Anti-Imperialist News]

  Why Israel demolishes: Khan al-Ahmar representation of greater genocide

Sept. 18, 2018  - http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=781114
By: Ramzy Baroud

Like vultures, Israeli soldiers descended on Khan Al-Ahmar, on Sep. 14 
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/09/israel-shuts-roads-leading-khan-al-ahmar-village-180914121436782.html>, 
recreating a menacing scene with which the residents of this small 
Palestinian village, located East of Jerusalem, are all-too familiar.

The strategic location of Khan Al-Ahmar makes the story behind the 
imminent Israeli demolition of the peaceful village unique amid the 
ongoing destruction of Palestinian homes and lives throughout besieged 
Gaza and Occupied West Bank.

Throughout the years, Khan Al-Ahmar, once part of an uninterrupted 
Palestinian physical landscape has grown increasingly isolated. Decades 
of Israeli colonization of East Jerusalem and the West Bank left Khan 
Al-Ahmar trapped between massive and vastly expanding Israeli colonial 
projects: Ma'ale Adumim, Kfar Adumim among others.

The unfortunate village, its adjacent school and 173 residents 
<https://www.btselem.org/communities_facing_expulsion/khan_al_ahmar> are 
the last obstacle facing the E1 Zone project, an Israeli plan that aims 
to link illegal Jewish colonies in Occupied East Jerusalem with West 
Jerusalem, thus cutting off East Jerusalem completely from its 
Palestinian environs in the West Bank.

Like the Neqab (Negev) village of Al-Araqib, which has been demolished 
<https://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=780965> by Israel and rebuilt 
by its residents 133 times, Khan Al-Ahmar residents are facing armed 
soldiers and military bulldozers with their bare chests and whatever 
local and international solidarity they are able to obtain.

Despite the particular circumstances and unique historical context of 
Khan Al-Ahmar, however, the story of this village is but a chapter in a 
protracted narrative of a tragedy that has extended over the course of 
seventy years.

It would be a mistake to discuss the destruction of Khan Al-Ahmar, or 
any other Palestinian village outside the larger context of demolition 
that has stood at the heart of Israel’s particular breed of settler 
colonialism.

It is true that other colonial powers used destruction of homes and 
properties, and the exile of whole communities as a tactic to subdue 
rebellious populations. The British Mandate government in Palestine used 
the demolition of homes as a ‘deterrence’ tactic against Palestinians 
who dared rebel against injustice throughout the 1920s, 30s and 40s, 
till Israel took over in 1948.

Yet the Israeli strategy is far more convoluted than a mere 
‘deterrence’. It is now carved in the Israeli psyche that Palestine must 
be completely destroyed in order for Israel to exist. Therefore, Israel 
is engaging in a seemingly endless campaign of erasing everything 
Palestinian, because the latter, from an Israeli viewpoint represents an 
existential threat to the former.

This is precisely why Israel sees the natural demographic growth among 
Palestinians as an ‘existential threat’ to Israel’s ‘Jewish identity’.

This can only be justified with an irrational degree of hate and fear 
that has accumulated throughout generations to the point that it now 
forms a collective Israeli psychosis for which Palestinians continue to 
pay a heavy price.

The repeated destruction of Gaza is symptomatic of this Israeli psychosis.

Israel is a "country that when you fire on its citizens it responds by 
going wild - and this is a good thing," was the official explanation 
<https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israeli-cabinet-divided-over-fresh-gaza-surge-1332024.html> 
offered by Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister in January 2009 to 
justify its country’s war on the blockaded Gaza Strip. The Israel "going 
wild" strategy has led to the destruction of 22,000 homes 
<http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/01/19/gaza.war/>, schools and 
other facilities during one of Israel's deadliest wars on the Strip.

A few years later, in the summer of 2014 
<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-gaza-war/human-rights-watch-accuses-israel-of-war-crimes-in-gaza-idUSKBN0H60XZ20140911>, 
Israel went "wild" again, leading to an even greater destruction and 
loss of lives.

Israel's mass demolition of Palestinian homes in Gaza, and everywhere 
else, preceded Hamas by decades. In fact, it has nothing to do with the 
method of resistance that Palestinians utilize in their struggle against 
Israel. Israel's demolishing of Palestine - whether the actual physical 
structures or the idea, history, narrative, and even street names - is 
an Israeli decision through and through.

A quick scan of historical facts demonstrates that Israel demolished 
Palestinian homes and communities in diverse political and historical 
contexts, where Israel's "security" was not in the least a factor.

Nearly 600 Palestinian towns, villages and localities were destroyed 
<https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/israel-70-nakba-gaza-protests-palestinians-declaration-independence-exile-a8346331.html> 
between 1947 and 1948, and nearly 800,000 Palestinians were exiled to 
make room for the establishment of Israel.

According to the Land Research Center (LRC) 
<https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/news/2018/3/15/israel-demolished-5000-homes-in-jerusalem-since-1967-report>, 
Israel had destroyed 5,000 Palestinian homes in Jerusalem alone since it 
occupied the city in 1967, leading to the permanent exile of nearly 
70,000 people. Coupled with the fact that nearly 200,000 Jerusalemites 
were driven out during the Nakba, the Catastrophe' of 1948, and the 
ongoing slow ethnic cleansing, the Holy City has been in a constant 
state of destruction since the establishment of Israel.

In fact, between 2000 and 2017, over 1,700 Palestinian homes were 
demolished 
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/03/lrc-israel-demolished-5000-homes-jerusalem-180314130519139.html>, 
displacing nearly 10,000 people. This is not a policy of 'deterrence' 
but of erasure - the eradication of the very Palestinian culture.

Gaza and Jerusalem are not unique examples either. According to the 
Israeli Committee against House Demolitions (ICAHD's) report 
<https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/06/israel-occupation-50-years-of-dispossession/> 
last December, since 1967 "nearly 50,000 Palestinian homes and 
structures have been demolished – displacing hundreds of thousands of 
Palestinians and affecting the livelihoods of thousands of others."

Combined with the destruction of Palestinian villages upon the 
establishment of Israel, and the demolition of Palestinian homes inside 
Israel itself, ICAHD puts the total number of homes destroyed since 1948 
at more than 100,000.

In fact, as the group itself acknowledges, the figure above is quite 
conservative. Indeed, it is. In Gaza alone, and in the last 10 years 
which witnessed three major Israeli wars, nearly 50,000 homes and 
structures were reportedly destroyed 
<https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/06/israel-occupation-50-years-of-dispossession/>.So 
why does Israel destroy with consistency, impunity and no remorse?

It is for the same reason that it passed laws to change historic street 
names 
<https://gulfnews.com/news/mena/palestine/colonists-change-street-names-in-hebron-1.1453892> 
from Arabic to Hebrew. For the same reason it recently passed the racist 
Nation-state law 
<https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israel-jewish-nation-state-law-passed-arabs-segregation-protests-benjamin-netanyahu-a8454196.html>, 
elevating everything Jewish and completely ignoring and downgrading the 
existence of the indigenous Palestinians, their language and their 
culture that goes back millennia.

Israel demolishes, destroys and pulverizes because in the racist mindset 
of Israeli rulers, there can be no room between the Sea and the River 
but for Jews; where the Palestinians - oppressed, colonized and 
dehumanized - don't factor in the least in Israel's ruthless calculations.T

his is not just a question of Khan Al-Ahmar. It is a question of the 
very survival of the Palestinian people, threatened by a racist state 
that has been allowed to "go wild" for 70 years, untamed and without 
repercussions.

Ramzy Baroud <http://www.ramzybaroud.net/> is a journalist, author and 
editor of Palestine Chronicle. His latest book is The Last Earth: A 
Palestinian Story.
-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 https://freedomarchives.org/
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