Good.
Warder
Palestinian villages face demolition to create IDF training ground
Israeli Defence Forces plan to turn Hebron villages into military training ground
Israel's ministry of defence has rejected an appeal to save eight West Bank Palestinian villages in the southern Hebron hills that are slated for demolition to make way for an Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) training ground.
Defence minister Ehud Barak reiterated to Israel's high court on Sunday the state's position that the Palestinian villagers are not full-time residents of the land and should be removed to the nearby town of Yatta.
They would be allowed to return to tend their land and graze sheep at weekends, Jewish holidays and two one- month stints every year when soldiers do not train.
Around 1,500 people live in Majaz, Tabban, Sfai, Fakheit, Halaweh, Mirkez, Jinba and Kharuba. They are mostly farmers who live from the rearing and selling of sheep and goats.
For these villagers, leaving the expansive Hebron hills is simply not an option.
"We have no choice but to be here, this is how we were raised and this is how we live," said one shepherd from Khirbat Zanuta, another village in the area whose homes, sheep pens and water cisterns have all been issued with demolition orders. "The only thing we know how to do is raise sheep. We can only do that here."
Based on the testimonies of local informers, Israel argues that these communities do not genuinely live on the land but are based in nearby towns. A state investigation conducted in 2000 found "there were no permanent residents in the area".
The villagers, supported by the evidence of Israel archaeologists and human rights groups, say their families have farmed the area since the late 1800s, certainly long before Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012...ion-idf-hebron
Good.
Warder
Will have to live and see what the Supreme Court decides.
The American media is going to love this one.
Anyways everything is following due process. Only the sensationalist title makes it newsworthy. There's land discussions between citizens and state or municipal authorities everywhere.
In b4 this becomes a bigger story then the Syria deal.
What smells bad here?
The whole process is put up to debate in the court and open for everyone to see.
It's not as if Israel is rounding them up on trucks in the middle of the night and sending the bulldozers without previous notice based on a whim.
But of course when Jews talk about evicting Arabs it's "ethnic cleansing", when Arabs demand the same for Jews in the entire West Bank it's a "reasonable demand"...
Palestinians have to pay the consequences of their mistakes, its time they learned that.