Jerusalem, June 29: Israeli authorities have handed eviction orders to several Palestinian families in the occupied West Bank, giving them a 24-hour deadline to evacuate their homes.
Ten families in the Jordan Valley received orders on Sunday to quit their houses, while the Palestinians say they have documents on their ownership of the land filed with Israel’s Land Registry, Ma’an news agency reported on Monday.
The families said they had received demolition orders before, but this was the first time they had been given a 24-hour notice.
A spokesman from the Israeli civil administration office explained the move, saying the orders were issued because the homes are located in a “fire zone,” which put the residents “at risk.”
The homes slated for demolition are in al-Farsieyah in the Tubas municipality, all in “Area C”, which encompasses 60 percent of the West Bank and under the Oslo Accords falls under full Israeli military and administrative control.
The Israeli municipal authorities also ordered six families in the Tubas-area villages of al-Hadidiya and Khirbet Humsa on 21 June to leave their land within 10 days.
So far this year, some 125 Palestinians have been displaced by Israeli home demolitions in the so-called Area C, where Palestinian constructions has been limited to boundaries specified by Israel’s civil administration, an area that constitutes less than one percent of Area C.
Effectively, “in almost the entirety of the Jordan Valley, Palestinian construction is prohibited,” a UN office reported in December 2009.
In a recent report, Amnesty International slammed the Israeli demolition and eviction orders for not only destroying Palestinians’ homes but taking away “their possessions and their hopes for a secure future.”
At least 600 Palestinians, half of them children, were rendered homeless by Israeli demolition orders in 2009, the report said.
——–Agencies