(22.12.2018) In response to the ruling, which followed a protracted legal battle, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised, on more than one occasion, that the village in the Judean desert on the road which descends from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea, will be razed“very soon.”
“I will not tell you when, but we are preparing for it,” he promised.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda yesterday warned Israel against demolishing the Palestinian Bedouin village of Khan Al-Ahmar and displacing its residents saying the action could constitute a “war crime”.
“Extensive destruction of property without military necessity and population transfers in an occupied territory constitute war crimes under the Rome Statute,” Bensouda said in a statement.
Israel has decided to indefinitely delay the forced evacuation of the illegally built West Bank herding village of Khan al-Ahmar.
Israel’s High Court of Justice had ruled that there was no legal barrier to the demolition of the village, but that it preferred to see a negotiated resolution.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided Saturday that the evacuation of the Palestinian Bedouin village, Khan al-Ahmar, would be postponed.
The BDS movement has issued calls to boycott and divest from Caterpillar and Volvo for their complicity in the demolition of the Palestinian village.
In view of the visit of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, which began Wednesday, the government decided to put off the demolition and evacuation of the Jahalin Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar for a few days, so as not to embarrass her.
Holding posters of Angela Merkel ahead of a scheduled visit to Israel by the German chancellor, Bedouin children appealed to her on Tuesday to help block Israeli plans to raze their hamlet in the occupied West Bank.
“This act is not only heartless and discriminatory; it is illegal. The forcible transfer of the Khan al-Ahmar community amounts to a war crime. Israel must end its policy of destroying Palestinians’ homes and livelihoods to make way for settlements.”
Khan al-Ahmar, which is located near Route 1, is home to several dozen families from the Jahalin tribe. The tribe originated in the Negev and was expelled to the West Bank in the 1950s. Aerial photographs and testimony by villagers show that the residents wandered within the Jerusalem-Jericho region before gradually establishing permanent residence in Khan al-Ahmar, apparently in or around the 1970s.
The Portuguese Parliament voted in favor of a bill that condemns the Israeli decision to expel Palestinian Bedouins living in village of Khan Al-Ahmar in occupied East Jerusalem.
The court ruled that the village was built without the relevant building permits.
Critics say such permits are nearly impossible to obtain for Palestinians in Israeli-controlled areas of the West Bank.