ISRAEL TO DEPORT HUNDREDS OF BEDOUINS
Gaza, 20 Dhulqo’dah 1435/14 September 2014 (MINA) – An Israeli military order announced construction bids to relocate Bedouin communities in Abu Dis in occupied Jerusalem, lawyer Bassem Bahar, head of Abu Dis land defense and anti-settlement committee, said on Saturday.
The Israeli occupation army is to deport dozens of Bedouin families as a preliminary step to resettle them in Abu Dis territories, expropriated from the Palestinian natives under the security pretext, Bahar declared, Palestinian Information Center quoted by Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA) as reporting.
The Israeli occupation authorities (IOA) have embarked on such a deportation scheme since 1997 when hundreds of Bedouins, dwelling in the peripheries of the Israeli illegal Ma’aleh Adumim settlement block, have been displaced as part of Israel’s schemes to expand the settlement.
The tenders aim at boosting Israeli illegal settlement around Occupied Jerusalem at the expense of Palestinians’ land rights and private property.
The rule coincided with a series of break-ins launched by Israeli extremist settler hordes via the western path to Abu Dis town, where a settlement block is to be built under the so-called “Israeli vanguards” plot.
The execution of the bid will result in the forced displacement of the Bedouin communities around the E1 area as part of an Israeli push to provide more room for illegal settlement activity and isolate the native inhabitants in remote cantons.
“The initiation of such a dislocation tender will set the stage for the construction of an apartheid wall in the eastern part of Abu Dis and other adjacent areas and will result in closing down the historical Jericho-Jerusalem street,” the lawyer charged.
According to Bahar, the plan will not only lead to isolating Abu Dis from the other West Bank areas but will also strike a blow at Palestinians’ right of return, for most of the to-be deported Bedouins are refugees from Beer Sheba and should rather return to their own lands rather than being resettled in other territories.
Bahar called on the Palestinian Authority (PA) to step in and foil such a deportation scheme, which is a real threat to the Palestinians’ right and dream to establish a Palestinian independent state.
He further spoke out against such an ethnic cleansing bid, which will inevitably result in mounting IOA’s misappropriation of Palestinians’ lands and forced displacement of indigenous families, all procedures categorically outlawed by international laws and conventions.(T/R04/R03)
Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA)
