On 19 November, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Palestinian village of Khan al-Ahmar, which has become an international cause célèbre, ‘will be demolished very soon’. The removal of the village would enable the Israeli government to cut the occupied West Bank in two, making a Palestinian state impossible.
The Israeli security cabinet had delayed the demolition by ‘several weeks’ on 21 October to provide time for negotiations for an agreed-upon evacuation of the 180 Bedouin residents of the hamlet.
Khan al-Ahmar is in a key strategic position, a few kilometres from Jerusalem between two major illegal Israeli settlements, Maale Adumim and Kfar Adumim, both of which the Israeli government wants to expand.
In recent months, the Bedouin village has received solidarity visits from: Rabbis for Human Rights; Arab members of the Israeli knesset (parliament); Norwegian trade unionists; officials from different Palestinian ministries; Palestinian prime minister Rami Hamdallah; and hundreds of Palestinian and international activists.
The Palestinian Authority described the decision to raze the village as a ‘colonial project’.
Topics: Israel-Palestine