update from Cassandra Dixon in Palestine - 1/25/12

Submitted by staff on Fri, 01/27/2012 - 6:57pm
Dear Friends,
 
Around 9:00 AM on the morning of January 25th Israeli soldiers used two bulldozers to demolish two homes in the village of Um al Kheer, which is south of Hebron, and very near the village of Tuwani.  The remaining 20 homes in the village are under demolition orders which have been delivered in the last 2 years.  One of the homes belongs to an elderly couple, and the other to a woman with 9 children.
 
Palestinians tried to prevent the destruction by putting themselves between the bulldozers and the houses, but soldiers removed them and completely destroyed the structures.  The elderly owner of one of the homes became ill after soldiers pushed him away from his house.
 
The soldiers then went to the nearby Bedouin village of Khallet el Mayya where they delivered a stop work order and seized a tractor and trailer which Palestinians were using to build a house last week. Villagers attempted to stop the theft of the trailer and tractor by placing themselves in front it and one man laid under the trailer.  The soldiers then disconnected the trailer from the tractor and drove the trailer away, taking other building tools and materials with them.
 
Photos of the incident are at: http://goo.gl/S0Tfg
 
Umm Al Kheer is a Bedouin village in C Area (under Israeli civil and military administration) built in 1948. Settlers established the settlement of Karmel right next to Umm al Kheer in the early 1980's and since then have continued to expand onto more Palestinian land by building additional structures. The village routinely experiences harassment from Israeli settlers and the military.
 
All of this has brought be back to the Village of Tuwani, along with others form the CPT team in Hebron.  --  Children are a year older there, and it has been wonderful to see people - but very sad circumstances.
 
Thanks and love, cassandra  To learn more about this 2-month CPT project, go to http://www.wnpj.org/node/6428

Update on 1/28/12

The UN has just released a report on home demolitions here.  According the UN almost 1,100 Palestinians, over half of them children, were displaced due to home demolitions in the West Bank by Israeli forces in 2011 – over 80 per cent more than in the previous year.  An additional 4,200 people were affected by the demolition of structures related to their livelihoods. The report, “Demolitions and Forced Displacement in the Occupied West Bank,” was prepared by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and released on January 26.

The report states that Israeli forces destroyed 622 structures owned by Palestinians including homes, animal shelters, classrooms and mosques – a 42 per cent increase compared to 2010.
 At least 93,100 residents  live in structures built without a permit and remain at risk of displacement, and adds that Israel, as the occupying power in the West Bank, has the obligation to protect Palestinian civilians and to administer the territory for their benefit.

Following the report's publication, the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for the occupied Palestinian Territories, Max Gaylard, visited the town of Anata where recent demolitions have left 52 people, including 29 children, homeless. Gaylard called for an end to all demolitions and reiterated the statements of Valerie Amos, the Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and head of OCHA, who urged Israel, in a visit last May, to end its evictions policy and to look carefully at the key humanitarian concerns of demolitions and displacement in the West Bank.

To read the report, which includes maps detailing the areas affected by demolitions, visit the following link.