Israel destroys Palestinian village for second time in three months

Israel razed an entire Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank to the ground Monday — just three months after completely destroying the same village. 

Khirbet Humsah, or Humsah al-Foqa, is a Bedouin enclave in the northern Jordan Valley made up of several clusters of herding communities. Reports have indicated that somewhere between 74-85 Palestinians live in the village, a majority of them children. 

The 11 families of Khirbet Humsah maintain a semi-nomadic way of life, relying on livestock and agriculture to sustain themselves and their families. The residents of the village primarily live in tents, and house their livestock in structures made out of aluminum and tin. 

At around 9:00 am on Monday, Israeli armed forces and Civil Administration authorities arrived at the village with bulldozers and proceeded to dismantle at least 28 structures, including homes and agricultural pens. 

According to the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), around 25 structures (homes and animal shelters) were confiscated, 17 of which had been donated as humanitarian assistance. 

UN OCHA also reported that 55 people, including 32 children, were displaced, and that 18 people “were otherwise affected.”

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) reported that after destroying and dismantling the tents and structures, Israeli forces confiscated what was left and loaded the wreckage onto their trucks and confiscated the contents. 

According to Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, before the demolition began Israeli forces ordered the villagers to relocate to the Ein Shibli area of the Jordan Valley. 

After demolishing and confiscating the residents’ homes, B’Tselem said that Israeli forces told residents they could get their belongings back if they “undertook to relocate to the designated site.”

A Palestinian boy stands next to his family's belongings near the site of their home that was destroyed by Israeli forces on February 2, 2021. (Photo: Shadi Jarar'ah/APA Images)
A Palestinian boy stands next to his family’s belongings near the site of their home that was destroyed by Israeli forces in Khirbet Humsah on February 2, 2021. (Photo: Shadi Jarar’ah/APA Images)

“After the residents refused to comply, the equipment was confiscated and put in Civil Administration storage,” B’Tselem said. The group added that in order to “cover up the forcible transfer,” the Israeli military spokesperson “tried to create the impression that the residents had ‘voluntarily agreed’ to leave the area after ‘dialogue’.”

“Yet when one side – Israel – has all power and can threaten defenseless Palestinians with demolition orders, bulldozers and weapons, consent is not on the cards. Rather, it is an act of coercion and violence by Israel’s apartheid regime, which advances the principle of Jewish supremacy by geographically and demographically engineering space,” B’Tselem said. 

According to PCHR, after demolishing the village, Israeli authorities then threatened the residents, saying they would return the next day and expel them. 

A Palestinian woman arranges her belongings after her home was demolished by Israeli forces, February 2, 2021. (Photo: Shadi Jarar'ah/APA Images)
A Palestinian woman arranges her belongings after her home was demolished by Israeli forces, February 2, 2021. (Photo: Shadi Jarar’ah/APA Images)

Wafa, the official Palestinian Authority (PA) news agency, reported that local Palestinian activists attempted to rebuild the village on Tuesday night, February 2nd, but were prevented from doing so by Israeli forces who “stormed the community.”

On Wednesday February 3rd, Israeli forces reportedly arrived back to the village and further dismantled and destroyed any remaining structures that activists managed to erect the night before. 

This week’s demolition campaign is not the first time Khirbet Humsah’s residents were left homeless and displaced. On November 3rd, 2020, just hours before the US elections, Israeli forces completely razed the village to the ground, leaving its residents to spend a cold and rainy winter night without shelter. 

Last year’s demolition of the village — one of the largest in recent years — was met with widespread condemnation from the international community, and Palestinian activists who said it was part of Israel’s “clear goal” to “expel Palestinians from this land, replace them with settlers, and annex the land into Israel.”

In response to this week’s demolition, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh described the destruction of Khirbet Humsah as “organized state terrorism,” that “involves ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population by favoring the settlers in the Israeli election campaigns for which our people pay for with their land, property, and suffering.”

PCHR condemned the demolition, saying “this is an Israeli systematic policy to impose a fait accompli to enforce its control and sovereignty on parts of the West Bank.”

“PCHR calls upon the international community and United Nations bodies to uphold their legal and moral duties, and to urgently intervene to stop the Israeli occupation’s crime against Palestinians and to guarantee their protection,” the group said in a statement. 

Palestinians sit next to their family's belongings near the site where there home stood before being destroyed by Israeli forces in the West Bank enclave of (Photo: Shadi Jarar'ah/ APA Images)
Palestinians sit next to their family’s belongings near the site where there home stood before being destroyed by Israeli forces in the West Bank enclave of Khirbet Humsah (Photo: Shadi Jarar’ah/ APA Images)

According to the latest numbers from the UN OCHA, Israel has demolished 105 Palestinian structures in the occupied West Bank so far in 2021, displacing 124 Palestinians. 

In 2020, Israel demolished at least 847 Palestinian homes and structures, and displaced over 1,000 Palestinians, during some of the worst months of the pandemic. 

The period from March 2020 until August 2020 saw some of the highest rates of demolitions in the four years prior, with a monthly average of some 65 demolitions. Among the structures demolished were hygiene or sanitation assets, and structures used for agriculture. Many of the structures, the UN OCHA noted, were given as humanitarian aid to the communities. 

Meanwhile, Israel has continued to promote settlement expansion across the West Bank in defiance of international law, promoting the advancement of thousands of new settlements just in the first month of 2021. 

The remains of Khirbet Humsah following a demolition campaign carried out by Israeli forces on February 2, 2021. (Photo: Shadi Jarar'ah/APA Images)
The remains of Khirbet Humsah following a demolition campaign carried out by Israeli forces on February 2, 2021. (Photo: Shadi Jarar’ah/APA Images)
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