KHIRBET TANA, JORDAN VALLEY, January 3, 2016 (WAFA) – Israeli forces Tuesday demolished at least 13 residential structures, including a school, in the Bedouin village of Khirbet Tana in the northern Jordan Valley, according to residents.
Majed Afif, a resident of Khirbet Tana, told WAFA that Israeli army bulldozers demolished 13 structures in the village, including his own home and other facilities.
“We now live in the open and cold air,” he said expressing his dismay at what happened to his village. “We are not going to give up. We are going to rebuild our village,” he said.
Khirbet Tana is a community of around 250 people. It is located in Area C of the West Bank, which makes up more than 60 per cent of the area of the West Bank but is under full Israeli military control.
Surrounded by two major Israeli settlements, Itamar and Mikhora, the village faced four demolition raids last year when 150 structures were destroyed displacing 214 people.
The village lacks basic infrastructure mainly because Israel does not allow Palestinian development of any kind in Area C. Roads are unpaved and in ruins. There are no water or sewage lines and no electricity grid. The residents use solar panels to generate electricity provided as part of European humanitarian aid, which also usually get destroyed or seized by the Israeli army.
The Israeli military uses the area for training purposes and when it does it orders the families to leave their homes for hours or days at time until the drill is over.
Ghassan Daghlas, who monitors Israeli violations in the north of the West Bank, said Israeli soldiers accompanied by heavy machinery embarked on demolishing the village and the only school in it that serves other nearby communities under the pretext of construction without permission.
The school was built with funding from the Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection of the European Commission. It was opened for students only in November.
According to UN-OCHA, the repeated waves of demolition carried out by the Israeli authorities “make it extremely difficult for Khirbet Tana residents to live in stability, sustain their livelihood, or, given the repeated demolition of the village school, educate their children.”
“There are numerous other Palestinian communities living in a similarly precarious situation due to their location in an area declared ‘closed’ by the Israeli authorities,” the group added.
M.N./M.K.
