Amnesty International:

Zionist Regime’s Demolition Plan of Khan al-Ahmar War Crime

Date: 02 October 2018 - 22:13

News ID: ۵۸۰۰۴

WEST BANK (Dispatches) – Amnesty International has censured the Zionist regime’s plans to demolish a Bedouin village in the occupied West Bank and forcibly transfer its residents as the Tel Aviv regime presses ahead with its land expropriation policies in the occupied territories irrespective of great international outcry.
"After nearly a decade of trying to fight the injustice of this demolition, the residents of Khan al-Ahmar now approach the devastating day when they will see their home of generations torn down before their eyes,” Saleh Higazi, Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International, said.
He added, "This act is not only heartless and discriminatory; it is illegal. The forcible transfer of the Khan al-Ahmar community amounts to a war crime. The Zionist regime must end its policy of destroying Palestinians’ homes and livelihoods to make way for settlements.”
Some 180 residents of Khan-al Ahmar village face being forcibly evicted and transferred by the regime’s army.
The occupying regime’s authorities have reportedly offered the villagers a choice of two possible destinations: a site near the former al-Quds municipal garbage dump, near the village of Abu Dis, or a site in the vicinity of a sewage plant close to the city of Ariha.
The regime’s supreme court has twice ruled in favor of demolishing the entire village of Khan al-Ahmar, first on May 24 and again on September 5 this year.
Meanwhile, holding posters of Angela Merkel ahead of a scheduled visit to the occupied territories by the German chancellor, Bedouin children appealed to her on Tuesday to help block Israeli plans to raze their hamlet in the occupied West Bank.
Khan al-Ahmar’s 180 residents, backed by foreign activists who have gathered at the site, have been waiting for bulldozers to move in at any time after an Oct. 1 deadline from Israel for the villagers to demolish their own homes expired.
Palestinians say razing the Bedouin village’s tents and tin and wood shacks is part of an Israeli plan to create an arc of Jewish settlements that would effectively cut off East al-Quds from the West Bank, areas captured by the regime in a 1967 war.
The Zionist regime, which has long sought to clear the Arab nomads from tracts of land between the settlements of Maale Adumim and Kfar Adumim, said Khan al-Ahmar was built without the required permits. Palestinians say such documents are impossible to obtain.
The United Nations, European Union and human rights groups have urged the regime not to demolish Khan al-Ahmar, citing the serious impact on the community and prospects for peace.
The expulsion plan includes relocation to an area about 12 km (seven miles) away next to a landfill.

Palestinian Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar, east of al-Quds, is seen decorated with Palestinian flags by activists and residents of the village in the occupied West Bank, on October 2, 2018.