Israeli officials have over the past week issued dozens of stop work orders threatening “nearly every structure” in a part of the village of Khan al-Ahmar, the UN said.

The United Nations humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories, Robert Piper, visited the village where the school is among 140 structures at risk of demolition.

“Khan al-Ahmar is one of the most vulnerable communities in the West Bank struggling to maintain a minimum standard of living in the face of intense pressure from the Israeli authorities to move,” he said in a statement.

Robert Piper 2016 (CC BY-SA Rick Bajornas, Wikimedia commons)

Robert Piper

“This is unacceptable and it must stop.”

Israel says the buildings were built without permits.

The UN says such permits are all but impossible to obtain for Palestinians.

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The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories confirmed to The Times of Israel that all illegal structures in the village were given orders to “cease construction.”

The body, which interfaces with Palestinian residents of the West Bank and Gaza, made no mention of orders to leave the buildings but said that the residents were invited to a hearing about the buildings on Thursday where they would be able to present their case.

A number of traditionally nomadic Bedouin communities are based east of Jerusalem, where rights groups fear demolitions could eventually clear the way for further Israeli settlement construction.

This could partly divide the West Bank between north and south while further isolating the territory from East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians see as their future capital.

The UN says there are 46 communities in the central West Bank at risk of forcible transfer, ousting approximately 7,000 residents.


The rubber tyres are sorted, filled with earth and compressed to make them waterproof and thermal building materials.


The completed tyre school in Khan al-Ahmar, east of the settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim, 2015. Photo Olivier Fitoussi

In Rare Move, Israel Orders Demolition of Entire West Bank Bedouin Village

Israel has avoided large-scale evacuation of Palestinians in Area C, partly because of the involvement of European and American diplomats

By Yotam Berger, Haaretz premium
February 20, 2017 

In a rare occurrence, the IDF’s Civil Administration in the West Bank on Sunday distributed some 40 demolition orders in a Bedouin village in Area C, which is under full Israeli civil and military control.

A few hundred people live in temporary structures without any infrastructure in the Bedouin encampment of Khan al-Ahmar, just east of the settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim. Among the buildings at the site is the “Tire School,” built of worn-out tires, which is used by students from a number of illegal villages in the area.

The structures in the village were built without permits, but the Civil Administration has avoided demolishing them or evacuating the entire village, despite political pressure to do so.

Residents say the issuing of dozens of demolition orders is unprecedented in the area. “All the houses received [demolition] orders,” A’id Khamis Jahalin, a local resident, told Haaretz. “I’m scared. This time is different. Then they gave one [demolition order] or two, but such a blow, it’s something. They gave 42 orders. They gave for everything, there are no structures here in all the area that didn’t receive an order. I spoke with our lawyer, they gave us up to five days [to object], that’s a short time,” said Jahalin.

Israeli authorities confirmed that such a widespread issuance of demolition orders was unprecedented in the area, and this is a declaration of intention in advance of an attempt to evacuate the entire village.

In the past, the Civil Administration has offered residents to move to a permanent location, which the residents say does not meet their needs in terms of Bedouin lifestyle, amount of land and proximity to other Bedouin tribes. The government has avoided any large-scale evacuation of Palestinians in Area C, partly because of the involvement of European and American diplomats.

The Bedouins living in Area C near Ma’aleh Adumim endure harsh conditions and poverty, and the EU has often provided structures in their villages. These buildings have been put up illegally, but the EU makes sure to put a large sticker with the EU flag on all of them. The Civil Administration sometimes removes these structures. The Tire School was built in 2009 by an Italian NGO, and has since become a symbol for the Bedouins in the region.

Last week, the State Prosecutor’s Office informed the High Court of Justice in two cases that the government wanted to postpone the sessions on the demolition of structures in the Bedouin community in the West Bank, in light of the attempts to formulate a new policy on the matter.