On the evening of 3 November 2020, 73 people, including 41 children, were displaced when Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) demolished homes and other structures belonging to the Palestinian community of Humsa Al Bqai’a.
A total of 76 homes and facilities are believed to have been demolished by Israeli authorities, making it the largest demolition operation carried out by the IOF for over a decade. Homes, animal shelters, latrines, water tanks, and solar panels were destroyed during the operation, with nine tractors, five carts, and two private vehicles also confiscated.
The current COVID-19 pandemic and the imminence of winter has resulted in a community that is particularly at risk and has magnified the violation of the human rights of those affected. This was reiterated by Yvonne Helle, the UN humanitarian coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territory who called these communities “some of the most vulnerable” on the West Bank.
The village is one of several communities in the Jordan Valley that is located within the “firing zones” of Israel’s military training. Despite being in Palestinian territory, those living in these communities often face demolition for building without Israeli construction permits; which, according to Yvonne Helle, “Palestinians can almost never obtain.”
2020 has seen a massive spike in demolitions carried out across the West Bank and East Jerusalem, with 689 facilities destroyed by Israeli authorities so far. This is a substantial increase from 2019 where 521 structures were destroyed and is more than any full year since 2016.
The move has also drawn widespread condemnation from leading rights organisations, with the Gaza-based NGO, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights describing the operation as:
“an accelerated campaign by IOF to demolish and destroy Palestinians’ homes and properties in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, under the Israeli annexation and settlement-expansion schemes in what can only be considered an act of ethnic cleansing against the indigenous Palestinian population.”
The continuation of these demolitions has been identified as a breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention which, in article 49, prohibits the:
“Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons ..” unless “the security of the population or imperative military reasons so demand.”
Prominent Israeli Human Rights group, B’Tselem, called the operation a part of Israel’s “efforts to take over more and more Palestinian land”; adding, with reference to the US election, that it seemed:
“Israel was making use of the fact that everyone’s attention is currently set elsewhere to move forward with this inhumane act”
Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has previously said that he intends to annex large sections of Palestinian territories, including the Jordan Valley, possibly indicating that IOF demolition operations of this scale could become more frequent. These demolitions also directly oppose Israel’s agreement to suspend annexation as a premise for the recent Abraham accords, that were signed by the UAE, Bahrain, and Israel on 15 September 2020.