Last month, for the fourth time, Israel destroyed the Bedouin community of Khirbet al-Makhul in the occupied West Bank’s Jordan Valley, razing houses and displacing 120 people under a newly-approved Prawer Plan (or the Bill on the Arrangement of Bedouin Settlement in the Negev) that will forcibly remove up to 40,000 Arab Bedouin farmers, shepherds and citizens of Israel from their ancestral homes and place them in Israeli-authorized, hardscrabble urban townships - echoes of South Africa - to make room for Jewish settlements, development and agriculture. One of many, often-multiple demolitions, the Israeli courts said the Khirbet al-Makhul homes were illegal because they lacked mandatory construction permits, which are almost impossible to obtain. When a group of European diplomats tried to deliver tents and other aid to families who remained on the land, they too were forcibly removed and the site was declared a closed military zone. A handful of Bedouin have remained on the land to tend to the animals, sleeping under the stars and surrounded by an Israeli military base, a Jewish-only Israeli settlement and a live-fire Israeli military training area. Part of an implacable continuum, the Bedouin displacement mirrors Israels other, decades-long hardships and displacements - the exiling of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, the destruction of hundreds of their villages, the uprooting of an estimated 800,000 of their olive trees, or the equivalent of 33 NYC Central Parks. Last week, the World Bank issued a report that found, entirely unsurprisingly, that the Palestinian economy is struggling under Israeli strictures that only worsen. Thus, does Israels democracy proceed apace. [...] --- commondreams.org/further/2013/10/15-0
Posted on: Tue, 15 Oct 2013 22:31:20 +0000