More Palestinians made homeless in the wake of home demolition by Israel

Activists hold flags as they protest latest demolitions

Today another Palestinian village has been hit by devastating home demolitions. Sixty-six people were made homeless, including 36 children in the community of Ain el-Helwe in the Jordan Valley. The Jordan Valley has been continuously inhabited for 11,000 years. It has been home to Canaanites for thousands of years, and now many of their descendants are being forced from their ancestral homes. 

On Saturday, 1 February 2014, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories said, “I am deeply concerned about the ongoing displacement and dispossession of Palestinians… along the Jordan Valley where the number of structures demolished more than doubled in the last year.” (Picture and quote from: http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2014/02/01/U-N-slams-Israel-destruction-of-Jordan-valley-homes-.html)

The Jordan Valley is only the latest of the home demolitions to be publicized on the internet. The demolitions in and around Jerusalem continue in near-total silence. The two videos below show recent activity in home demolition. You Tube has videos documenting home demolitions that date back seven years and more.

The short video shows how one man salvaged what he could from the wreckage of his home and moved his belongings into a nearby cave. In the short interview, he says that a judge forbid him from rebuilding. The man asked the judge where his family was supposed to live. The answer—that’s not my problem.

The next video talks about the very real possibility of new recently constructed apartment buildings being demolished. One local resident claims that no one will leave and the Israelis will have to demolish the building with the residents inside. A representative of a local NGO is quoted as saying, “That’s the way they clear land for future settlements.”

Two kids taken by Israeli soldiers

It’s something that happens every day in the Occupied Territories, so why am I writing about it? Because of a random tweet, because it was written up in the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, because the reason it caught my eye was that this article was about newborn kids—the four-legged variety.

My first thought was: How sad is that? The arrest and incarceration of children has become so commonplace that it no longer attracts attention. The abduction of baby goats is more noteworthy than the abduction of a child.

 “Two and half hours after the kids were born a group of soldiers, probably serving at the Nahal base at Krayot ‏(not in the West Bank‏), showed up and confiscated the goat and two newborn kids, loading them on their Hummer. Mahamra’s donkey, which had been harnessed to a water container on wheels, disappeared too.” http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/the-idf-battles-a-palestinian-shepherd-and-his-two-baby-goats.premium-1.507009

My second thought was: In some ways, taking three goats and a donkey from this man may have even more disastrous results than arresting a child. It could very well threaten the livelihood of the entire family. The donkey may be their only transportation; their only means of getting fresh water, getting to the nearest town to sell their livestock or buy basic necessities. Sell their livestock? Without the mother goat and kids, there will be far less livestock to sell, no milk, no cheese. The shepherd is from the village of Maghayir al-Abeed in the South Hebron Hills. He raises his goats on the same land his father did, and probably his father before him for generations.

How did such a story even get into Haaretz? The article states that several nudniks (I looked it up—nudnik is a Yiddish word meaning persistent pest) took up the case. They put it up on Facebook and started investigating the abduction of the animals. Others read about it on Facebook and began to call and add their voices.

They were told the shepherd entered a closed firing zone with the intention of stealing ammunition. The kids were less than three hours old—not exactly ideal get-away vehicles for an ammunition thief. Also, the land is NOT a closed firing zone. The IDF wants to demolish eight of the twelve villages that are on 30,000 dunums of land (about 7,500 acres) to make it a firing zone. Israel’s High Court is debating the issue and has ruled that the status quo cannot be changed until they make a final ruling. Looks like the IDF (Israeli Defense Force) is getting a head start.

I usually embed a video at the end of my blog post. The one I wanted to share with you does not allow me to embed it.  Here is the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpPMyQz759k&list=PLA21794A5EF380C4A 

 

 

 

Dispossession and Destruction

What would you do if you woke up one cold winter morning and someone with a gun and a uniform handed you a demolition order for your house?

When a heavily armed group of soldiers are outside your door, there is not much you can do.  This is happening in the Palestinian village of Jaba.  The people of the village live on land that Israel wants for an illegal settlement.  See http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/02/04/287269/israel-to-raze-another-palestinian-village/ to see a video that shows the poverty of this village, and interviews with several of the residents.  This is not the first time the army has demolished homes in the village, and I’m sure it won’t be the last.  Soon Jaba will be added to the list of Palestinian villages that have been totally erased from the face of the earth.

Wikipedia has a table showing 531 destroyed/depopulated localities in the period from November 1947 to July 1949 alone.  This was just the beginning.  Towns, villages, hamlets, and neighborhoods are continually eroded and eventually erased by the forces of occupation.

If you search YouTube for Demolished Palestinian Villages, you will find 2,400 results. I have chosen a recent one to embed in this post.

The Palestinians cling to their heritage and beg the world to notice.

Samer Issawi is one of the many, many political prisoners in Israeli jails.  Samer is giving his life to call attention to what is happening in Palestine.  As I write this (February 8, 2013) his has been on a hunger strike for 200 days.  His body is shutting down, his captors mock his efforts, and still the media ignores him. (See the Free Samer Issawi Campaign on Facebook for more on his story.)  Can you even imagine 200 DAYS without food? I can't go 200 MINUTES without a snack or a cup of tea.

 

Despair, frustration, and anger can combine with devastating consequences—yet the Palestinians remain steadfast. For a more intimate look at how one family of Palestinian refugees cope with this maelstrom of emotions and their consequences, read my novel, REFUGEE WITHOUT REFUGE http://www.amazon.com/dp/1456486055

 

 

.

A New National Park in Israel

Today, December 29, 2012, Israel declared a new national park.  Interestingly enough, as with most of the parks in Israel, this park is complete with “historical ruins,” including a lovely old stone church.  Where do they get the land for national parks when Historical Palestine is about the size of Massachusetts, and is home to two nations?  The simple answer is, the land came from the same source as all of the land in Israel—it is land that belongs to Palestinians.  The land for this park once hosted a thriving village, called Biram.  The residents of the village were forced out by the Israeli army in 1949 and were not allowed back, in spite of a 1951 Supreme Court decision upholding their right to return. (http://www.facebook.com/welcometopalestine)

 Unfortunately, this is just the latest of the national parks that Israel has established at the expense of prior residents.  Canada Park, a centerpiece of the national park system, was established at the expense of three Palestinian villages.

The Wikipedia entry for Canada Park reads as follows:

Canada Park (Hebrew: פארק קנדה, Arabic:كندا حديقة) (also Ayalon Park)^[1] is a national park stretching over 7,000 dunams, mostly in the West Bank, with a portion in the region that was a no man's land before 1967 and incorporated into Israel in 1967.^[2] It is maintained by the Jewish National Fund of Canada. Canada Park is located west of Jerusalem, to the north of Highway 1 (Tel Aviv - Jerusalem), between the Latrun intersection and Sha'ar HaGai.^[3] The park attracts some 300,000 visitors annually.  Canada Park ... is filled with wooded areas, walking trails, water features and archaeological sites. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Park)

Although Wikipedia says that the park is “mostly in the West Bank,” it does not mention that before Israel captured that land during the 1967 war, the land was the site of the Palestinian villages of Imwas, Yalu, and Beit Nuba.  The people who lived on this land for generations are now refugees.

According to Eitan Bronstein, director of Zochrot (Remembering), 86 Palestinian villages lie buried under Jewish National Fund parks. A further 400 destroyed villages had their lands passed on to exclusively Jewish communities.  Zochrot is trying to educate people to the hidden history behind the establishment of the national parks in Israel.  http://electronicintifada.net/content/canada-park-and-israeli-memoricide/8126

This video shows rare footage of the villages and interviews several people with first-hand knowledge of the destruction of the villages.