Palestinian villagers brace for more demolitions after Israeli bulldozers leave 100 homeless

Israel is trying to clear 1,000 Palestinian residents from a 30 square kilometre area of land south of Hebron to make way for an army firing-practise zone, reports Ben Lynfield.

Palestinian children search for toys in the remains of their home in Jinba after it was demolished by Israeli bulldozers on February 2, 2016. Hazem Bader/AFP

JINBA // Palestinian villagers in a remote corner of the occupied West Bank are bracing themselves for more demolitions this week, just days after Israeli army bulldozers left more than a hundred people homeless.

The demolitions are the latest development in a 17-year dispute over Israeli plans to clear 1,000 Palestinian residents from a 30 square kilometre area of land south of Hebron to make way for an army firing-practise zone.

Villagers and their lawyers had been engaged in mediation efforts with the Israeli government to settle the dispute but last Monday Israel announced that talks had collapsed.

Ali Mohammed Jabareen, 54, a sheep herder and construction worker, lost the house he lived in with his wife and eight children on Tuesday when the army razed 22 residential buildings in the hamlets of Jinba and Halawa.

His son, who has five children, also lost his home. Both buildings were in Jinba.

The first night after the demolitions they stayed out in the open with just blankets to protect them from the elements. Mr Jabareen’s 3-year-old grandson was so traumatised he could not sleep.

“He was yelling that the army is coming and behaving like a mad person,” said Mr Jabareen.

The next night, they were able sleep inside tents provided by an aid agency. The grandfather was able to save mattresses, blankets, rugs and four solar panels from his home before it was demolished.

“There were two bulldozers here and border police and army jeeps. I would say there were 40 to 50 soldiers,” said Nidal Yunis, a local government official, standing amid the rubble of in Jinba.

Ten more residential buildings in the area were also marked for demolition by the army, but a court injunction obtained by lawyers for the villagers the same day blocked this from happening until a hearing is held on Tuesday.

This hearing at Israel’s High Court of Justice in Jerusalem will determine whether the army has a legal basis to destroy the additional buildings in the villages of Al Fahit, Majaz, Sfay, Um Tuba and Al Mercaz.

The piece of land termed by Israel as “Firing Zone 918” was first designated as a military training zone in the 1980s but it was not until 1999 that the army moved against the Palestinian residents, demolishing structures and forcibly evicting them.

A court injunction that same year allowed villagers to return to the area, pending deliberation of a legal challenge to the evictions. The court on several occasions referred the matter to arbitration, a procedure for resolving disputes outside of court. This last happened in September 2013 after 25 leading Israeli authors signed a petition asking that the villages be saved.

The European Union has also called on Israel not to expel the villagers or demolish their homes.

The arbitration process is secret and it is not entirely clear why the latest attempt failed. But according to Israel's Haaretz newspaper, the army had asked to begin conducting monthly training exercises on the land lasting for several days at a time. The residents, who would have been forced to vacate the area during exercises, refused, Haaretz said.

The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (Cogat), the military body responsible for civilian affairs in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, said the latest demolitions were “enforcement measures ... taken against illegal structures and solar panels built within a military zone”.

Cogat said that during the last two years, Israeli authorities had conducted “a dialogue process with the population in order to legalise the structures.” But it accused the Palestinians of being unwilling to “get the situation in order” and of continuing “illegal construction.”

Israel says the villagers are not permanent residents on the land and should instead be considered residents of the nearby Palestinian city of Yatta. The villagers, however, say they have lived in the hamlets since before Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967.

Sarit Michaeli, spokeswoman of the Israeli human rights group B’tselem, said the establishment of a military training zone in occupied territory was a violation of international law.

“Army training is not an immediate military necessity that would allow” a land seizure in accordance with the Fourth Geneva Convention and The Hague Regulations, she said.

The Palestinians living on this piece of land are some of the poorest in the West Bank, eking out livelihoods from herding goats and sheep. Because their communities are considered illegal by Israel, they are not hooked up to the water carrier and electricity grid. Meanwhile, the road to Jinba is a treacherous passage of dirt and rocks.

Less than two kilometres away is the Israeli settler outpost of Mitzpe Yair, which has a paved road and electricity and water supply despite having been built without formal Israeli government permission.

In Jinba, Mr Jabareen, who works on construction sites in Israel when he is able to get a permit to cross over from the West Bank, recalled how he helped to build an eighteen story tower in Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv.

“I worked all the time in Israel. I built Israel and this is their present for me,” he said.

Despite the pressure to leave Jinba, however, Mr Jabareen said he would be staying put.

“This is my place. I am not leaving it. They can destroy it or not destroy it, but I am here.”