By Qais Abu Samra

KHAN AL-AHMAR, Palestine

Israel on Thursday razed a symbolic “village” in East Jerusalem erected earlier by Palestinian activists to protest an Israeli plan to demolish Khan al-Ahmar, a nearby Bedouin hamlet.

“An Israeli army force stormed the symbolic village before demolishing it,” Walid Assaf, head of an anti-settlement commission affiliated with the Palestine Liberation Organization, told Anadolu Agency.

The Israeli force, Assaf said, had since cordoned off the area, designating it a “military zone”.

The incident, he added, was likely a prelude to the imminent demolition of Khan al-Ahmar -- a Bedouin village locate nearby -- and the eviction of its inhabitants.

A “symbolic” village erected in East Jerusalem, Al-Wadi al-Ahmar is located to the north of Khan al-Ahmar.

The two villages -- one real and one symbolic -- are separated by the Jewish-only Kfar Adumim settlement.

Earlier this week, dozens of Palestinian activists hastily erected the symbolic village, which had consisted of five homes built of tin and wood before it was razed.

Al-Wadi al-Ahmar was built as a means of protesting Israel’s plan to demolish Khan al-Ahmar to make way for its massive E1 settlement project.

Israel seeks to expel 10,000 Bedouin residents of the E1 zone -- which sits on 15 square kilometers of land in East Jerusalem -- to build Jewish-only residential units linking Jerusalem to the Maale Adumim settlement.

If implemented, the plan would effectively cut the West Bank in two, thus preempting the emergence of a territorially-contiguous Palestinian state based on pre-1967 borders.