Years of violent attacks and restrictions by the Israeli army and settlers have forced the roughly 200 residents of Ein Samiya village out of their homes in what rights groups call a “war crime”. Among the villagers are 78 children whose school was singled out for demolition by Israeli authorities.
The last families remaining in the village, which had shrunk by 30 percent under constant harassment, loaded their belongings onto trucks on Wednesday, 44 years after they first settled there.
In the 1990s, under the Oslo Accords, their village was classified as being in Area C – the 60 percent of the occupied West Bank controlled by the Israeli military, which severely restricts Palestinian construction and development in the area through demolitions, fines, and other punishments.
Area C is also where hundreds of Israeli settlements and outposts, considered illegal under international law, are. There are at least 46 villages and communities, home to more than 8,000 Palestinians, that are considered by the United Nations to be at “high risk of forcible transfer due to a ‘relocation’ plan advanced by the Israeli authorities” in Area C of the West Bank.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Palestinian Authority presidency spokesman Ibrahim Melhem said: “This is called ethnic cleansing, which forced the residents of Ein Samiya to leave, under the threat of the settlers and other restrictions.”
Read more here.
