NABLUS, February 12, 2011, (WAFA)-  Khirbet Tana, a small village to the east of Nablus, has been demolished on Wednesday for the fourth time since 2005.

After  the Israeli threat to expropriate the village land, 32 families have been live in constant fear and unrest.

“The Israeli forces demolished my house, my birthplace and the place of my childhood memories,” says 70-year-old Mohammad Hanani, one of the village residents.

Hanani and his seven children are left now with no shelter having to bear extreme cold weather conditions.

Israeli military marked Khirbet Tana as a closed area for training purposes and it even built a settlement on the land. However, “this land is ours and we have documents proving our land ownership dating back to The Turkish rule,” said Hanani. 

 Atef Hanani, mayor of Beit Furik, a village on whose land Khirbet Tana is built on, asserted that Khirbet Tana is owned by Palestinians since the  Jordanian and Turkish rule.  However, Israel confiscated one third of the land, around 12,000 dunums, which are used  for herding and agriculture.

Israel banned residents from  building permanent structures on the site of their former homes by refusing to issue the necessary permits but this didn’t stop them from resisting by rebuilding modest structures of residential tents.  

Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said that the Israeli adoption of the continuous demolition policy aims at an ethnic cleansing of the village residents forcing them to leave their land and emigrate.  But the Palestinian authority will work side by side with the residents to help them rebuild their demolished homes, hence ensuring their right  to live in freedom and dignity, Fayyad said.

State Minister Mohammad Ghneim noted that governmental measures are taken in coordination with  international and humanitarian organization in Palestine to assist residents in rebuilding their houses.

He condemned Israel’s recent practices in Khirbet Tana ensuring his support to Palestinian determination to stay in their land and resist the Israeli occupation.

Israeli efforts to empty Khirbet Tana of its Palestinian population dates back to the occupation of the West Bank in 1967, with the situation worsening considerably after the Oslo Accords divided the West Bank into three different zones and designated most of the West Bank into Area C under full Israeli control.

Khirbet Tana, which happened to be in Area C, was demolished for the first time in 2005. Israeli soldier with bulldozers raided it a second time in May 2008, once again leaving only rubble in their wake.  In January 2010, all 25 structures remaining in the village, including the village’s school, were once again flattened by the Israeli army bulldozers.

R.H./M.A.