Saturday, May 04, 2013

How Israel is squeezing the Palestinians out of their land...

IT WAS just another day for the Israeli army on the West Bank. Having parked its jeeps in the hills south of Hebron, a unit of soldiers checked the papers of the Palestinians who lived there, confiscated one or two, and then herded the people and their flocks off a hilltop which a nearby Jewish settlement, called Susiya, has been eyeing with a view to taking it over. “Military zone,” tersely explained an Israeli officer, who had just received a warrant declaring it such. “Off you go.”

Taking time out from their Saturday morning prayers, a few settlers looked on approvingly. “Don’t argue,” replied the officer, when a Palestinian shepherd asked why the soldiers were moving Arabs out of the newly acquired military zone but not Jews. “You have a minute to move or I’ll arrest you,” said the officer.

“Settlers are just off-duty soldiers,” mumbled the shepherd to his sons as they stubbornly continued to tend their sheep. A Palestinian mother picnicking with her two toddlers is hauled away by Israeli soldiers, while villagers plead for her release.

The signs of previous bouts of displacement ring the adjacent hills. Mobile homes for young Jewish settlers sprout on the hilltops. Armed with a list of military orders, Israeli soldiers are herding the West Bank’s Palestinians out of the rural 60% of the territory, officially known as Area C, where Israel has full military and civilian control, and into cities. Full story...

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