Under Threat: Demolition Orders in Area C of the West Bank<\/a>\u201d – comprising over 60% of its land, including its valued water resources and most agricultural areas.<\/p>\nIsrael considers it sovereign territory. Hardliners want it officially annexed, displacing its Arab population entirely.<\/p>\n
OCHA cited Israeli data indicating plans to demolish an estimated 13,000 Palestinian owned structures – \u201cheighten(ing) the vulnerability of thousands of poor Palestinian households, some of whom are at imminent risk of forcible displacement.\u201d<\/p>\n
Racist Israeli policy makes it \u201cnearly impossible for Palestinians\u201d to build on their own land. Over 300,000 reside in Area C – in 532 residential areas.<\/p>\n
Structures built without permit permission risk demolition. Orders once issued are permanent, executed at Israel\u2019s discretion, often on short notice or none at all, residents often losing possessions they had no time to remove before Israeli bulldozers destroyed their property.<\/p>\n
Displacement, loss of livelihoods, destitution, deprivation and increased dependency on aid follows. \u201cThe entire West Bank population is affected by what happens in Area C,\u201d said OCHA.<\/p>\n
Israel demolishes Palestinian homes punitively, for lacking building permits, for military reasons or undefined ones – a racist policy flagrantly breaching international law.<\/p>\n
The Al Haq human rights group calls it collective punishment amounting to \u201ca war crime and a crime against humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Earlier, Rabbis for Human Rights said \u201c(A) politically motivated land policy must not come at the expense of the rights of a population subjected to occupation, which is excluded from the decision-making processes of those shaping its destiny.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe procedures empower the ability to use the mechanism Israel set up for declaring ‘state lands’ for the purpose of dispossessing Palestinian communities and individuals of their rights and lands.\u201d<\/p>\n
ICAHD calls Israel\u2019s demolition policy a peace-destroying initiative – reflecting institutionalized racism constituting state terror.<\/p>\n
According to OCHA, Palestinian construction is prohibited in 70% of Area C – heavily restricted in another 29%, permitted in only 1% of Palestinian owned land.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe rapid increase in demolitions shows that we must move beyond words towards concerted action to stop these violations of international law,\u201d Medical Aid for Palestinians head Tony Laurance explained.<\/p>\n
OCHA discussed a \u201cdual system.\u201d The \u201cplanned area per Israeli settler is more than 13 times larger than the planned area per Palestinian” – about 790 square meters per settler, versus 60 square meters per Palestinian.<\/p>\n
Demolished houses and other structures leave thousands of Palestinians homeless and destitute. Fourth Geneva\u2019s Article 49 prohibits forcible displacement of protected persons or transferring parts of an Occupying Power\u2019s own civilian population to territory it controls.<\/p>\n
Israel wants Palestinians forcibly displaced for land it wants exclusively for Jews. During decades of occupation harshness, it systematically destroyed privately owned Palestinian homes, other structures, businesses, agricultural land, livestock facilities and other property.<\/p>\n
ICAHD calls home demolitions and forced evictions \u201camong Israel\u2019s most heinous practices\u201d – violating the letter and spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 25) stating:<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fourth Geneva and other fundamental humanitarian and human rights laws are violated. Apartheid is racism\u2019s worst form. Militarized Israeli occupation the worst type – systematically displacing Palestinians for exclusive Jewish development in flagrant violation of international law.<\/p>\n
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.<\/p>\n
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.claritypress.com\/LendmanIII.html<\/p>\n
Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.<\/p>\n
Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.<\/p>\n
It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Stephen Lendman (RINF) – Longstanding Israeli policy calls for Judaizing Palestine, ethnically cleansing non-Jews, continuing slow-motion genocide against Muslims, and prohibiting Palestinian self-determination. The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) says nothing demonstrates Israel\u2019s racist policy \u201cmore graphically than\u2026house demolitions\u201d – over 46,000 Palestinian owned homes and other structures destroyed since June 1967, to facilitate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":141463,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461,1622],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-179299","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"category-featured"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179299\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}