Pro-Bedouin peace camp destroyed again
Gate of Jerusalem protest camp, Abu Dis, West Bank, February 9th, 2015
Israeli forces raid Abu Dis protest camp for 5th time
By Ma’an news
February 11, 2015
JERUSALEM — Israeli forces on Tuesday raided the “Jerusalem Gate” protest camp near Abu Dis, threatening to dismantle it within 24 hours, a local coordinator said.
Thaer Anees, coordinator for the Jerusalem district popular resistance committees, said Israeli forces entered the camp accompanied by intelligence officers.
The protest camp has been destroyed by Israeli forces and rebuilt four times in the past week.
Popular resistance spokesman Hani Halabiya told Ma’an that dozens of local and international activists and nearby villagers have come to the camp daily in protest against the confiscation of Palestinian land.
The camp was built in protest against an Israeli plan to build Jewish-only settlements in the E1 corridor east of Jerusalem on the way to Jericho where Palestinian Bedouins have been living for decades.
In January 2013, Palestinian activists set-up over 25 tents and a medical center in the E1 area east of Jerusalem to protest Israeli settlement plans and protect Palestinian land from annexation.
The protest village, called Bab al-Shams, or ‘Gate of the Sun’, was later demolished by Israeli forces.
Over the following months, activists set up the al-Karamah (Dignity) protest village in Beit Iksa, and the Ahfad Younis village in Eizariya.
Tents destroyed, sleeping outside
Jerusalem Gate Village Demolished for the 4th Time
By IMEMC News & Agencies
February 08, 2015
Mustafa Al-Barghouthi, General Secretary of the Palestine National Initiative (PNI), told the Palestinian News Network (PNN) that, if Abu Dis falls under Israeli control, the West Bank will be divided in half, with 62% of the land seized, and futher hindering any possibility Palestinian state.
Map from Camden – Abu Dis Friendship Association showing Abu Dis separated by the wall from E.Jerusalem.
Israeli forces, for the third time, dismantled the village on Thursday, just hours after it had been rebuilt, using pickup trucks and bulldozers. Tents were damaged, ID’s retained, chairs and supplemental food were confiscated, and the village was again rebuilt.
The project was first established Tuesday, on lands inhabited by the al-Jahalin Bedouin clan, in protest of the new “E1” settlement project which aims to confiscate thousands of dunams from East Jerusalem, for the purpose of settlement expansion.
On Wednesday, Israeli occupation forces attacked popular struggle activists in the newly rebuilt village, again removing tents and confiscating property. Munther Amira, chair of the higher coordination committee against the wall and settlements, assured the PNN that the committee will carry on with activities and work to increase resistance against Israeli apartheid policies.
Activist Mahmoud Zawahra said that Israeli forces chased the participants, as well as residents of Abu Dis, Ezariyah and other East Jerusalem desert villages, attacking them with teargas and sound grenades.
Jamil Barghouthi, activist and coordinator of the village, said that Jerusalem Gate was a reaction and rejection of the Israeli decision to displace East Jerusalem Bedouins into al-Eizariyya and Nuway’imah, near the Jordan Valley.
Voicing the role of the popular struggle against settlements and continued Israeli violations, Barghouthi called on popular resistance and relative associations to participate in the upcoming activities, in order to make 2015 the year for ending the Israeli occupation and its ethnic cleansing campaigns.
Israeli forces demolished homes of the Ka’abneh clan two weeks ago, in an attempt to displace them into a residential area of the Jordan Valley against their will.
The Israeli occupation continues with its discriminatory policies against Arabs in East Jerusalem, serving them with arbitrary demolition notices under the pretext of building without a permit, or simply claiming their land for the state as “absentee property”.
Through these policies, Israel intends to further expand East Jerusalem’s largest settlement, “Ma’ali Adummin”, and connect it with other Israeli-occupied cities, to seize it and evict Palestinian residents from the area.
The project began in 2007, threatening more than 15,000 Bedouin Palestinians (half of whom are children) living in groups since the Nakba of 1948.