Palestine Foreign Ministry Condemns Forced Evictions In Jordan Valley

Arab World

July 16th, 6:30am

Ramallah - Asharq Al-Awsat

Palestinian Bedouins prepare to evacuate as the Israeli army readies to carry out military exercises in the Wadi al-Maleh area, in the north of the Jordan Valley, West Bank, Jan. 2, 2013. - Ahmad Gharabli/AFP via Getty Images

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry on Thursday accused Israel of forcefully evicting Palestinian residents in Jordan Valley, which accounts for one-third of the West Bank area. In a statement, the Ministry held Israel totally responsible for forcibly expelling residents and demolishing most of the structures in the occupied territories, especially in the Palestinian village of Khirbet Humsa al-Fawqa in the northern Jordan Valley. This is the eighth time Israeli authorities had destroyed the village. “What is happening in the Jordanian Valley amounts to a war crime and is considered ethnic cleansing,” Ministry said in its statement, expressing its surprise that the international community is still silent about the Israeli forces’ demolition and confiscation of the homes of residents. The statement, reported by the German news agency, said that countries which have accused Palestine of breaching item 7 of the Human Rights Council, “to be ashamed of themselves, when they fail to prevent and condemn crimes committed by the Occupation Forces against human rights and the international law.'' “Events happening in Khirbet Humsa are nothing but new evidence that Israel became an apartheid state, in the complete sense of the word,” the Ministry noted. Khirbet Humsa is located in the Jordan Valley and is part of the 60 percent of the West Bank designated in the interim Oslo accords of the 1990s as Area C.

from Asharq AL-awsat https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3083151/palestine-foreign-ministry-condemns-forced-evictions-jordan-valley