EU Diplomat Warns of Biggest Mass Displacement of Palestinians in West Bank
Sven Kuehn von Burgsdorff, the EU’s ambassador to Palestine, raised the alarm on Thursday as he toured Masafer Yatta area in the south of the occupied West Bank, where evictions of Palestinians have increased after a controversial Israeli court ruling in May.
“If mass evictions and forcible transfer were to be the case, that would be the biggest forcible transfer for decades -– that's our concern here,” Von Burgsdorff said.
The Tel Aviv regime’s supreme court ruled on May 4 that more than 1,000 residents of the villages of Masafer Yatta had "failed to prove" their claim of permanent residence in the area before the Israeli military declared it a restricted site for military exercises, in which the presence of civilians is prohibited.
The judgment terminated a two-decade legal struggle over the land, designated as Firing Zone 918, paving the way for the Palestinians to be evicted from their homes.
Von Burgsdorff underlined that there has been a dramatic rise in demolitions since the ruling, with an EU source saying 27 buildings have been knocked down and at least 30 more demolition orders have been issued -– more than double the rate in recent years.
In the early 1980s, the Israeli military declared the 30-square-kilometer territory a restricted military area and claimed it was uninhabited while the Palestinians living there said it was their people's home long before the Israeli occupation forces set foot in the West Bank.
Von Burgsdorff said Israel's top judges had disregarded international law in the ruling which "seems to ignore" the regime’s responsibilities to the Palestinian residents as “an occupying power.”
“Families have lost their homes, but this decision is a political one, not a legal one at all,” he added. “International pressure is the only way to stop this.”
The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has slammed the court ruling as being intended to forcibly transfer hundreds of Palestinians from their homes and destroy their communities.
The court decision for eviction of more than 1,000 Palestinians from the West Bank area is “for the clear purpose of taking over their lands in the service of Jewish interests,” it said.
Israel occupied the West Bank, including the western part of the holy city of al-Quds, in 1967. It later annexed East al-Quds, which Palestinians want as the capital of their future state.
More than 600,000 Israelis live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East al-Quds. All Israeli settlements are illegal under international law as they are built on occupied land. The UN Security Council has condemned Israel’s settlement activities in the occupied territories in several resolutions.
Source: PressTV
