Tag: Beqa’ot Settlement

2nd July 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Nablus Team | Khirbet ‘Atuf, Occupied Palestine

On Thursday 27th June, beginning at 9 AM, Israeli military bulldozers demolished the homes and structures of four families in the village of Khirbet ‘Atuf, a shepherding village east of Tammun in Tubas Governorate. One man was taken to the hospital in Nablus after being physically beaten while attempting to protect his family from Israeli soldiers. Another man had his vehicle confiscated by Israeli authorities, and the total cost of his lost property totals $13,000 USD, not a small sum for a shepherding family. While Israeli authorities usually provide demolition notices to the families whose homes they are destroying, these families were given none. Other villagers fear that the demolitions of their own homes may come without notice at any moment.

Demolished makeshift houses (Photo by ISM)

The village, which is located in Area C and therefore under complete Israeli military and civil control, is no stranger to home demolitions. All four families whose homes were demolished on Thursday have had their homes demolished at least two previous times, and international aid agencies have provided temporary tents for the families to sleep in. The people are facing health problems from excessive heat exposure, and in some cases their sheep also no longer have protection from the sun – their shelters having also been destroyed.

The landscape of the village offers one of the most chilling images of Israeli apartheid. The villagers who has been prevented from farming their land by the Israeli military is dry, brown, mostly barren of vegetation and repeatedly subject to home demolitions; while Beqa’ot, the illegal Israeli colony directly adjacent to the village, is green, well-off, and receives the perpetual support, funding, and protection of the Israeli state and military.

Weekly military training exercises occur in the village, and the residents are forced to leave their homes during the duration of these exercises by the military. Unexploded ordnance (UXO), which the Israeli military is infamous for leaving behind during its 2006 war with Lebanon and the US military during its imperialist war in Vietnam, Laos, and, Cambodia, has been left behind in the village as a result of these military exercises. When these bombs are disturbed incidentally, they explode, and have caused thirty villagers to lose their limbs. Since 1970, fourteen villagers have died as a result of these exercises.

When asked what they will do next, the families whose homes have been destroyed said that they are seeking outside financial assistance to rebuild their homes.

Family furniture left without shelter (Photo by ISM)

by Ben Lorber

7 December 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

Before the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Al Hadidiya, near the Jordan Valley villages of Tubas and Jiftlik, was inhabited by over 100 families. Today, only 14 families remain. Since 1967, the village has been demolished four times, and over 3000 dunums of land, necessary for shepherding and grazing of animals, has been stolen by the nearby settlements of Ro’I and Beqa’ot.

On November 10, the community received nine new demolition orders that target 17 structures and will affect 72 people. As lawyers struggle to legally postpone or annul the orders, the people of Al Hadidiya wait in uncertainty and fear.

Abu Sacher is a shepherd whose makeshift tents are slated for demolition. Before 1967, the year of the first demolition of Al-Hadidiye, he, like all other villagers, lived in a sprawling stone house. “Do the Americans, the French or the British,” he protested, “think that the children in Palestine and the children in their countries are equally valuable? Do they want to live under occupation? America was under British occupation and they didn’t like that!”

Most villagers have relocated to nearby villages such as Tubas, Jiftlik, or Nablus. Others, however, like Abu Sacher, whose home has been demolished six times, remain steadfast on their land. “I will not leave my home”, he says. “Even if the entire population of America comes and settles here, I will still be here!”

In June 2011, Israeli military carried out two sets of demolitions in Al-Hadidiya, demolishing, according to the figures of Stop the Wall, 33 structures, leaving 37 residents without homes, and undermining the livelihood of a further 15.

The close proximity to Al Hadidiya and the nearby Ro'l settlement

A week after the November demolition orders inspired the Stop the Wall campaign to spearhead a letter-writing campaign, diplomats from 7 European representative offices visited Al Hadidiya to show solidarity. On November 17, a day before the scheduled demolition, Al Hadidiya’s legal defense team entered court to ask permission for the construction of homes. The Palestinian-owned land of Al-Hadidiya has since 1970 been declared an Israeli Area C military zone, despite the absence of any noticeable military activity.

As a consequence of policies designed to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian Bedouin from Area C of the Jordan Valley, the people of Al Hadidiya lack direct access to education, health care, electricity and water resources. Because villagers are barred from digging water wells or using the Mekorot water pipes that run under their feet, they cannot pursue their traditional agricultural lifestyle and must rear animals, a task made more difficult as more dunums of grazing land are stolen by settlements. “My family were peasants”, living off the land in a stone house, explains Abu Sacher, “but we have been made to live like Bedouin”, dwelling in tents as shepherds. The nearby settlements of Ro’I and Beqa’ot, on the other hand, enjoy an abundance of land and water, government subsidies, high-tech methods, and European markets for their agricultural industry.

Ben Lorber is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement.

Tag: Beqa’ot Settlement

House demolitions leave four families unsheltered in Khirbet ‘Atuf

Jordan Valley: threat of imminent demolition hangs over the village of Al Hadidiya