{"id":208240,"date":"2023-01-05T00:44:02","date_gmt":"2023-01-04T19:14:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/?p=208240"},"modified":"2023-01-05T00:44:02","modified_gmt":"2023-01-04T19:14:02","slug":"israel-demolishes-parts-of-west-bank-hamlet-set-for-eviction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/2023\/01\/05\/israel-demolishes-parts-of-west-bank-hamlet-set-for-eviction\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel demolishes parts of West Bank hamlet set for eviction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">JERUSALEM, 4 Jan: The Israeli military has demolished homes, water tanks and olive orchards in two Palestinian villages in the southern West Bank where some residents are at risk of imminent expulsion, residents and activists said Wednesday.<br \/>\nOne of the villages whose structures were demolished on Tuesday is part of an arid area of the West Bank known as Masafer Yatta, which the Israeli military has designated as a live-fire training zone. Some 1,000 residents of the eight hamlets that make up Masafer Yatta are slated for expulsion, an order Israel\u2019s Supreme Court upheld in May after a two-decade legal battle.<br \/>\nAccording to images shared by local residents and activists, armored vehicles escorted construction equipment to the demolitions in the villages of Ma\u2019in and Shaab al-Butum, which is part of Masafer Yatta.<br \/>\nGuy Butavia, an activist with the Israeli rights group Taayush, said the army razed five homes, animal pens and cisterns, spilling the contents of people\u2019s lives out onto the cold desert.<br \/>\n\u201cThey come and demolish your house. It\u2019s winter. It\u2019s cold. What\u2019s next? Where are they going to sleep that night?<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter-trends.digitnews.in\/\"><span style=\"color: #ffffff;\">\u201d<\/span><\/a> he said.<br \/>\nMost residents of the area have remained in place since the ruling, even as Israeli security forces periodically roll in to demolish structures. But they could be forced out at any time.<br \/>\nLocal officials and rights group said Israeli defense officials have informed them that they would soon forcibly remove more than 1,000 residents from the area.<br \/>\n\u201cThere is a genuine concern that a grave war crime will be committed,\u201d said Roni Pelli, a spokeswoman for ACRI.<br \/>\nCOGAT, the Israeli defense body that deals with Palestinian civilian affairs, declined to comment.<br \/>\nBoth villages are in the 60% of the occupied West Bank known as Area C, where the Israeli military exercises full control under interim peace agreements reached with the Palestinians in the 1990s. AP<br \/>\nPalestinian structures built without military permits \u2014 which residents say are nearly impossible to obtain \u2014 are at risk of demolition. AP<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Tuesday&#8217;s demolition comes against the backdrop of a new government in Israel, headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, where proponents of Israel&#8217;s West Bank settlement enterprise hold influential portfolios and are expected to both drive up settlement building and suppress construction for Palestinians in Area C.<br \/>\nThe families living in Masafer Yatta say they\u2019ve herded their sheep and goats across the area long before Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war.<br \/>\nBut Israel says the nomadic Arab Bedouin had no permanent structures when the military declared the area a firing and training zone in the early 1980s. In November 1999, security forces expelled some 700 villagers and destroyed homes and cisterns.<br \/>\nA twenty-year legal battle began the following year that ended in 2022 with the Israeli Supreme Court denying an additional hearing in October over the expulsion.<br \/>\nWhile previous Israeli governments have for decades demolished homes in the area, the current government is expected to step up demolitions in the area. AP<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>JERUSALEM, 4 Jan: The Israeli military has demolished homes, water tanks and olive orchards in two Palestinian villages in the southern West Bank where some residents are at risk of imminent expulsion, residents and activists said Wednesday. One of the villages whose structures were demolished on Tuesday is part of an arid area of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-208240","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208240\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}