RAMALLAH, Palestine
Israel’s civil administration last week issued demolition orders for more than 40 structures in the Palestinian village of Susiya in the West Bank city of Al-Khalil (Hebron).
According to the orders, the entire village – located on the border between the occupied West Bank and Israel – will be bulldozed, leaving hundreds of the village’s Palestinian residents without shelter.
“Israeli forces entered the village and issued demolition orders for 35 tents and five facilities for livestock-breeding,” Jihad al-Nawaja, head of Susiya’s village council, told Anadolu Agency.
“These racist demolition orders will leave more than 330 Palestinians without roofs over their heads,” al-Nawaja lamented.
The Israeli Civil Administration attributed the decision to raze the village to the lack of infrastructure for the local population. The Israeli government, meanwhile, only provides services to the Jewish-only Susia Settlement, which lies some 400 meters away.
According to al-Nawaja, the demolition of the village is meant to provide dozens of square kilometers of land for the expansion of the nearby settlement.
Susiya resident Salem Abu Haddar, 44, said the Israeli army had handed him a demolition order for his modest home made of corrugated iron.
“Eleven people live in this house; we have nowhere else to go,” Abu Haddar told Anadolu Agency.
He added that a number of village residents were refusing to leave and planned to resist the demolition orders.
“We inherited this land from our parents,” he asserted. “We will not give it up.”
Long-term plan
Israeli plans to raze Susiya village date back to 1982, when the first Jewish-only settlement was established in the area.
“Since 1985, we’ve been fighting Israel’s plan to demolish our village. We’ve petitioned the Israeli courts and international institutions,” village resident Hamed Meghnem told Anadolu Agency.
But the Israeli government, he said, “doesn’t care about court rulings.”
“We won’t leave,” he added. “We were born here and we will die here.”
Khalil Tufakji, a Palestinian expert on Israeli settlement construction, said Israel hoped to eventually evict all village residents from the eastern and southern mountains that surround Hebron.
“Israel plans to confiscate more than 300 square kilometers for settlement-building,” Tufakji told Anadolu Agency.
“Since 1967, Israel has sought to clear the Jordan Valley region of its Palestinian population,” he said. “Razing the village of Susiya is part of the plan to create a buffer zone along the border between the West Bank and Jordan.”
Since the collapse of peace talks with the Palestinians last year, Israel has stepped up its policy of building settlements in occupied Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Palestinian negotiators insist that Israeli settlement-building on Arab land must stop before any comprehensive peace agreement can be reached.
International law views the West Bank and East Jerusalem as “occupied territories” and considers all Jewish settlement-building on the land to be illegal.
Roughly 500,000 Israelis now live in more than 100 Jewish-only settlements built since Israel occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 1967.
The PA wants these areas, along with the Gaza Strip, for an eventual independent state of Palestine.
