Facing Expulsion

On Sunday, 3 September 2018, Civil Administration officials accompanied by a military jeep arrived at Khirbet Um al-Jamal and the al-Burj area in the northern Jordan Valley. The forces issued temporary evacuation orders to seven families, totaling 39 members (including 25 minors), instructing them to leave their homes from 5:00 P.M. the next day, 4 September 2018, until 10:30 A.M. the following morning, 5 September 2018. The families evacuated their homes the next day, some of them staying with relatives in Tayasir and others in the adjacent community of Khirbet ‘Ein al-Hilweh. Some of the families led their flocks to the area around Khirbet al-Maleh. When the families returned to their homes the next day, they found that two cows had been killed in the military operations. The cows belonged to shepherds from Khirbet ‘Ein al-Hilweh, who regularly graze their livestsock in the area. Other cows were injured.

On 19 August 2018, Civil Administration personnel handed Yusef Abu ‘Aram, from Qawawis, a stop-work order for a home where his family of eight were set to live. Yesterday, 3 September 2018, at about 4:00 A.M., Civil Administration, military and Border Police personnel arrived with a bulldozer and demolished the home which was still under construction. At around 10:30 this morning, 4 September 2018, Civil Administration personnel arrived again and confiscated a tent given to the family by the village council for temporary shelter following the demolition. The Palestinian village of Qawawis is located in an area from which Israel has been trying to expel local residents ever since the 1990s.

At ~4:00 P.M. yesterday (14 Aug. 2018), Civil Administration personnel, accompanied by a military jeep, came to Khirbet Yarza in the northern Jordan Valley and ordered a Palestinian family to leave home by 6:00 A.M. the next morning. This is the third time the family has been ordered to leave this month, after receiving temporary orders on 1 August ordering evacuation on three dates. The family moved to relatives in the village of Tubas. Three families from Tubas, which cultivate land in Khirbet Yarza, were also evacuated from the area.

At about 4:00 P.M. on Thursday, 9 August 2018, Civil Administration personnel, accompanied by a military jeep, came to Khirbet Yarza in the northern Jordan Valley and ordered a Palestinian family to leave its home by 6:00 A.M. the next morning. This is the second time that the Civil Administration has ordered the family to leave its home, after it delivered temporary orders on 1 August 2018 ordering the family to evacuate its home on three dates. Using a tractor and a private car, the family moved to a house belonging to their relatives in the village of Tubas, approximately five kilometers northwest of Khirbet Yarza. Three families from Tubas, which own farmland in Khirbet Yarza, were also evacuated from the area. After the families left the area, a Civil Administration officer ordered B'Tselem field researcher ‘Aref Dagharmeh and a crew from Palestine Television, who were documenting the evacuation, to come to Tayaseer checkpoint, where soldiers detained them all for about three hours.

Yesterday, 6 August 2018, at about 4:00 P.M., Civil Administration personnel arrived with a military-jeep escort at Khirbet Yarza, in the northern Jordan Valley, and ordered a Palestinian family to leave its home by 6:00 A.M. the next morning. The Civil Administration handed the family temporary evacuation orders on Wednesday, 1 August 2018 ordering them to leave their home on three different dates. Using a tractor and a private car, the family moved to a house belonging to their relatives in the neighboring village of Tubas. Later yesterday night, tanks and armored vehicles held exercises close to the family’s home and fired mortars. Three other families from Tubas, which own farmland in Khirbet Yarza, managed to irrigate their fields and feed their livestock before the Civil Administration personnel arrived.

At 10:00 A.M. on Wednesday, 1 August 2018, Civil Administration personnel arrived with a military-jeep escort at Khirbet Yarza, in the northern Jordan Valley, and handed temporary evacuation orders to a family of eight that includes three children. According to the orders, the family is forbidden to be at home from 4:00 P.M to 6:00 P.M. the next morning on the following dates: 6-7, 9-10 and 14-15 August. The orders will also prevent three families from Tubas, which own farmland in Khirbet Yarza, from working their fields and tending to their flocks on the above dates.

Yesterday, Wednesday, 25 July 2018, at around 7:00 A.M., Civil Administration personnel arrived with two trucks, a bulldozer and Border Police officers at the community of Jabal al-Baba, located near al-‘Eizariyah, northeast of Jerusalem (in an area called E1, near Ma'ale Adumim). The forces dismantle and confiscated two structures – one had been used as a day-care center for 28 children in the community. The other served as a community center for 45 women, offering social activities and workshops. The two structures were built about two months ago with the help of the EU. This is the second day-care center destroyed by the Civil Administration in Jabal al-Baba in the past year.

On 11 July 2018, at around 8:30 A.M., Civil Administration personnel arrived with a military and Border Police escort, and two trucks, at the Palestinian community of Khirbet Khilet a-Dabe' in the South Hebron Hills. The residents, including a group of children, gathered on the spot and soldiers fired stun grenades at them. Some four hours later, at about 1:00 P.M., the forces confiscated two classrooms that had been placed there several days earlier, on 6 July, with the help of the Palestinian Ministry of Education. The classrooms were meant to supplement the school’s single classroom, which was built a year ago and serves 10 students, ahead of the coming school year. They were supposed to serve another 10 students, who currently have to be driven to school in the neighboring village of a-Tuwani. Shortly after the forces arrived at the community, the residents filed a petition with Israel’s High Court of Justice demanding that the structures not be demolished or removed. Justice Grosskopf issued a temporary order forbidding the state to take any enforcement action until the suit for an interim injunction was decided. The order was issued after the classrooms had already been loaded onto the trucks, but before they had driven away. Nonetheless, the forces refused to unload the classrooms and the trucks drove off. Later, at around 4:00 P.M., Civil Administration personnel came with soldiers and a bulldozer to the area of She’b al-Batem, also in the South Hebron Hills, and demolished an approximately 50-meter long section of a path that the residents paved in early 2017.