Tag: Umm al Kher-al Faqir

Bedouin village of Umm Al Kheer under demolition threat, South Hebron Hills

10 January 2012 | Operation Dove

On January 8th, the DCO delivered stop working orders to 8 infrastructures in the Palestinian village of Umm Al Kheer.

In the morning the Israeli Civil Administration, escorted by an Israeli army jeep, entered the Palestinian village of Umm Al Kheer. After examining different buildings, the officers registered the identity of the owners of eight structures and then issued stop working orders.

Among the identified structures, there is also the fencing of the football field built on December 30th by Palestinians in cooperation with an Israeli group. At that time Israeli authorities gave a verbal permission to the construction.

The deadline to appeal to Israeli High Court is fixed on January 22nd. In case of failure of any appeal, the stop working orders will be followed by demolition orders.

The inhabitants of Umm Al Kheer said that 12 more structures in the village are under demolition orders (eight of which are dwellings) for a total of 20 structures. That means that most of the village risks to be eliminated in the next future.
Two of the families received the stop working order for the houses that they are building to replace the old ones, demolished on the 8th of September 2011 (see Press release at: http://goo.gl/GekGM).

Umm Al Kheer is a Bedouin village in area C (under Israeli civil and military administration) built in 1948. It’s located close to the Israeli settlement of Karmel established during the beginning of the ’80s and expanded in the recent years. The village routinely experiences harassment from Israeli settlers and military.

The last events are part of a planned strategy to expel the Bedouin community in order to permit a further expansion of the settlement of Karmel. In October 2008 the Israeli army demolished ten house-tents. The demolitions left 60 people homeless. In July 2009 some toilets were destroyed too. On September 8th 2011 three houses and one toilet were demolished.

Operation Dove has maintained an international presence in At-Tuwani and South Hebron Hills since 2004.

Pictures of the incident: http://goo.gl/fruCV

[Note: According to the Fourth Geneva Convention, the Hague Regulations, the International Court of Justice, and several United Nations resolutions, all Israeli settlements and outposts in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are illegal. Most settlement outposts, including Havat Ma’on (Hill 833), are considered illegal also under Israeli law.]

Nonviolent action by Palestinians and internationals stops settler road construction in Um al Kheir

Christian Peacemaker Team

Palestinians block earth-moving equipment in Um al Kheir

26 April 2009

Palestinians from the South Hebron Hills village of Um al Kheir today changed the route of a road being constructed by settlers from the illegal settlement of Karmel. The villagers, acting with internationals, nonviolently blocked the road-building equipment as it prepared the roadbed on land which belongs to Palestinians living in the village of Um al Kheir.

Palestinians and internationals gathered to confront settlers from Karmel, Israeli soldiers, and Israeli border police as work began at 7:00 AM. Israeli soldiers allowed the road work to continue despite a pending legal complaint filed by the village in Israeli court. One older Palestinian man who was sitting in front of earth-moving equipment was accidentally struck by stones which were dislodged by the work.

Survey markers placed the previous week in the village indicated that construction of the road would include the demolition of a Palestinian home and several agricultural structures. As marked now, the road will include the annexation of a large area of Palestinian land by the settlement, but will not include demolition of the home. A legal decision on construction of the road is expected within ten days.

Representatives from the United Nations Refugee Works Administration (UNRWA) were also present during the work because the villagers have refugee status. Residents of the Bedouin village of Um al Kheir bought the land the village currently occupies, including the land being used for construction of the settler road, fifty years ago. They were forced to move the village from its original location near Arrad in 1948, after the creation of the state of Israel.

Recent expansion of the Karmel settlement has included the construction of twelve double houses around the perimeter of the settlement. These are surrounded by a fence and a military road, which encroaches onto Palestinian land. The new road as proposed will extend the settlement farther into Um al Kheir, and will result in the annexation of a substantial area of land outside the existing settlement houses. Numerous other Palestinian villages in the South Hebron Hills have been impacted by the expansion of settlements and outposts in recent months.

The residents of Um al Kheir, along with villagers from nearby At-Tuwani and other villages in the area, remain committed to nonviolence as they struggle to oppose the illegal expansion of Israeli settlements and outposts. Villagers have filed legal complaints, and staged nonviolent grazing actions in the South Hebron Hills throughout the spring grazing season.

Construction of Israeli-only road threatens homes of Umm al Kher-al Faqir residents

“My family bought this land in 1948 after being expelled from our old home. It was just us, the birds, and the trees here at that time. But in 1967 the Israelis started to attack us, and ten years later they built a military outpost. Five years after that the settlers started buiding their homes on our land. Today they even tried to tear down our camp,” says Salim, a 60 year-old man from Umm al Kher-al Faqir.

A military road around the Karmel settlement, built on stolen land, is under construction, and was planned to go through the village demolishing some houses. The demolition order of the Bedouin camp outside Hebron was due at four o’clock on Sunday, 26 April 2009, but did not take place.

When the bulldozer started work on the land early in the morning, people from the camp attempted to prevent the demolition by sitting down in front of the bulldozer. After about three hours of applying pressure, the families of the village managed to re-route the construction of the road, so now it appears that less tents will be affected by the construction of the settler road.

Umm al Kher-al Faqir is a Bedouin camp in the South Hebron hills with 12 families and about 150 inhabitants. The people of the camp became refugees in 1948, after the beginning of the Israeli occupation. In 1981, Carmel settlement was established in the area. At that time, 40 dunams of land owned by the Palestinian residents were confiscated and given to the settlement, and residents of the camp consequently lost their farming plots. In early 2008, the Carmel settlement was expanded to include a new neighborhood occupying 50 more dunams of land from Umm al-Kheir. Since the establishment of the new neighborhood, settlers have regularly attacked the residents of Umm al-Kheir, with the intention of driving them out of their land.