Entire Palestinian village threatened with expulsion

Sunday June 22, 2008 00:48 by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC News

Israeli military forces have told the residents of the village of Arab ar-Ramadin that they will all be expelled from their homes in the coming weeks, as part of the Israeli project of expansion onto Palestinian land in the West Bank.

The Israeli Wall that blocks the village from the rest of the West Bank (archive)

Since the Israeli government began construction of their Annexation Wall on the village's land in 2004, the residents of Arab ar-Ramadin have maintained an increasingly tenuous hold on their ancestral lands, which have been rendered inside 'Israeli' area, due to the placement of the Wall.

There has been a low-intensity siege warfare on the village since 2004, in which residents have been forced to show an ID card which has not been issued to them, harassed at checkpoints and refused entry to their homes under the force of the Israeli military.

On June 5, an Israeli military commander, accompanied by a force of 20 soldiers, arrived in the northern part of Arab ar-Ramadin. The commander informed the head of the community that the village needed to move to the other side of the Wall. Upon the villagers refusal to cooperate, Occupation forces threatened them, stating that they would be forced to leave.

If the eviction is carried out, 207 people will be expelled; 30 homes and animal pens will be destroyed and an estimated 1,500 sheep, the main source of income for the people, will be adversely affected. Since 2004 demolition orders have been issued to the village. The most recent demolition took place in March of this year, when residential structures housing 10 people were bulldozed.

Since the building of the Wall, daily life in Arab ar-Ramadin has become a constant struggle. The village, which is located in the same pocket as Ras Tireh, Wadi Rasha, and Daba, is isolated by the Wall and the Alfe Menashe settlement from the rest of the West Bank. People are consistently harassed or completely barred passage at the gates that close them off from the rest of the world. Furthermore, they are unable to bring in fodder for the sheep as the Occupation military prohibits both the crossing of vehicles and anyone without a permit.

Arab ar-Ramadin does not have schools within the village. As of 2003, 46 students were travelling daily to Habla and six high school and two university students were studying in Qalqiliya city. Habla was, prior to the Wall, a 2.5 km walk for the students, today they must walk 5 km and await the opening of one of the Wall’s gates.

At least 2,339 dunums of the village's land have been confiscated in the southern area for the Wall. Some of these lands are used for grain (839 dunums) and the rest (1500 dunums) are pasturelands used for grazing animals.

According to the Popular Committee Against the Wall, the case of Arab ar-Ramadin is symptomatic of the Occupation’s policy of ethnic cleansing. This project is paired with the creeping expansions of the Wall, settlements, settler-only roads, checkpoints and a complex of military orders and restrictions that creates permanent pressure on the Palestinian population centres. Villages like Arab ar-Ramadin, which are surrounded completely by the Wall and settlements, live with the most serious threat.

Currently, there are 14 villages with a total population of 6,314 inhabitants that face the imminent destruction of their homes and expulsion from their land.

qalqilia | the wall | news report saed at imemc dot org