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<h1 class="title">Why Israel demolishes: Khan al-Ahmar
representation of greater genocide</h1>
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<div class="stamp">Sept. 18, 2018 - <font size="-2"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=781114">http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=781114</a></font><br>
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<div class="authorClass">By: Ramzy Baroud<br>
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<span style="font-style: italic;"><br>
</span>Like vultures, Israeli soldiers descended on Khan Al-Ahmar,
on <a
href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/09/israel-shuts-roads-leading-khan-al-ahmar-village-180914121436782.html">Sep.
14</a>, recreating a menacing scene with which the residents of
this small Palestinian village, located East of Jerusalem, are
all-too familiar.<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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.
<br>
<br>
The unfortunate village, its adjacent school and <a
href="https://www.btselem.org/communities_facing_expulsion/khan_al_ahmar">173
residents</a> 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.<br>
<br>
Like the Neqab (Negev) village of Al-Araqib, which <a
href="https://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=780965">has been
demolished</a> 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.<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
This is precisely why Israel sees the natural demographic growth
among Palestinians as an ‘existential threat’ to Israel’s ‘Jewish
identity’.<br>
<br>
<div>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.<br>
<br>
The repeated destruction of Gaza is symptomatic of this Israeli
psychosis. <br>
<br>
Israel is a "country that when you fire on its citizens it
responds by going wild - and this is a good thing," was the <a
href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israeli-cabinet-divided-over-fresh-gaza-surge-1332024.html">official
explanation</a> 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 <a
href="http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/01/19/gaza.war/"
target="_blank">22,000 homes</a>, schools and other facilities
during one of Israel's deadliest wars on the Strip.<br>
<br>
A few years later, in the <a
href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-gaza-war/human-rights-watch-accuses-israel-of-war-crimes-in-gaza-idUSKBN0H60XZ20140911">summer
of 2014</a>, Israel went "wild" again, leading to an even
greater destruction and loss of lives. <br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
Nearly 600 Palestinian towns, villages and localities <a
href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/israel-70-nakba-gaza-protests-palestinians-declaration-independence-exile-a8346331.html">were
destroyed</a> between 1947 and 1948, and nearly 800,000
Palestinians were exiled to make room for the establishment of
Israel.<br>
<br>
According to the <a
href="https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/news/2018/3/15/israel-demolished-5000-homes-in-jerusalem-since-1967-report">Land
Research Center (LRC)</a>, 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.<br>
<br>
In fact, between 2000 and 2017, over 1,700 Palestinian homes <a
href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/03/lrc-israel-demolished-5000-homes-jerusalem-180314130519139.html">were
demolished</a>, displacing nearly 10,000 people. This is not a
policy of 'deterrence' but of erasure - the eradication of the
very Palestinian culture.<br>
<br>
Gaza and Jerusalem are not unique examples either. According to
the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions (ICAHD's) <a
href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/06/israel-occupation-50-years-of-dispossession/">report</a>
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."<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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 <a
href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/06/israel-occupation-50-years-of-dispossession/">reportedly
destroyed</a>.So why does Israel destroy with consistency,
impunity and no remorse?<br>
<br>
It is for the same reason that it passed laws to <a
href="https://gulfnews.com/news/mena/palestine/colonists-change-street-names-in-hebron-1.1453892">change
historic street names</a> from Arabic to Hebrew. For the same
reason it recently passed the racist <a
href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israel-jewish-nation-state-law-passed-arabs-segregation-protests-benjamin-netanyahu-a8454196.html">Nation-state
law</a>, elevating everything Jewish and completely ignoring and
downgrading the existence of the indigenous Palestinians, their
language and their culture that goes back millennia.<br>
<br>
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<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
<span style="font-style: italic;"><a
href="http://www.ramzybaroud.net/" target="_blank">Ramzy
Baroud</a> is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine
Chronicle. His latest book is The Last Earth: A Palestinian
Story.</span></div>
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