Demolitions and confiscations in communities facing expulsion

On Wednesday, 8 February 2023, at around 4:00 P.M., Civil Administration personnel came with a military escort to the current location of Khirbet Humsah al-Foqa in the northern Jordan Valley. The community was forced out of its original location in 2021. The forces handed four families, numbering 26 people in total, including 16 minors, orders to vacate their homes for military training needs on 9 February 2023, from 8:00 to 11:30 A.M.

The families were already required to vacate their homes on the same grounds on 31 January 2023, but elected to stay put as the training was held some distance away.

On Wednesday, 25 January 2023, at around 7:00 A.M., Civil Administration personnel came with a military and Border Police escort and six bulldozers to the village of ‘Ein a-Duyuk a-Tahta, which lies west of Jericho. The forces demolished seven structures that served as vacation homes, one of which was a prefab and another under construction. They also demolished a swimming pool and three fences, damaged another fence, 13 water tanks and a road leading to one of the structures, and uprooted trees. The vacation homes belonged to seven families, numbering 43 people in total, 27 of them minors.

On Wednesday, 25 January 2023, at around 9:30 A.M., Civil Administration personnel came with a military and Border Police escort, a bulldozer and a digger to the southwestern part of Khirbet Ma’in, a Palestinian village that lies southeast of the town of Yatta in Hebron District. The forces demolished two agricultural structures, destroyed two solar panels and broke two trees belonging to a family of 10, five of them minors. The forces then went to the southeastern part of the village, where they dismantled and confiscated a tent the family had put up on its land for resting during the olive harvest, on the grounds it was an archaeological site.

On Sunday, 22 January 2023, at around 3:00 P.M., soldiers arrived at Khirbet a-Ras al-Ahmar in the northern Jordan Valley in a military vehicle and tried to confiscate a tractor used for plowing. The soldiers chased the tractor from the fields all the way to the office of the company it belongs to, inside the community, where they got into an argument with the farmers and the company owners. The soldiers left about an hour later without the tractor. 

On Sunday, 22 January 2023, at around 1:00 P.M., soldiers came in a military vehicle to the village of Furush Beit Dajan in the central Jordan Valley and confiscated a digger used to clean a water reservoir. The soldiers claimed the confiscation was due to “illegal development and infrastructure work.” They drove the digger, which belongs to the reservoir’s owner, to a military base near the village of al-Jiftlik.

On Wednesday, 18 January 2023, at around 7:00 A.M., Civil Administration personnel came with a military and Border Police escort and two bulldozers to the village of al-Jiftlik in the central Jordan Valley. The forces demolished the home of a family of seven, including five minors, and the home of a young couple. They also destroyed a water tank belonging to the family, and two water tanks and a power grid belonging to the young couple. Both homes were demolished on the grounds they were built on state land.

On Wednesday, 18 January 2023, at around 10:00 A.M., Civil Administration personnel arrived with a military and Border Police escort and a bulldozer at the community of Khirbet Tatrit (‘Arab al-Fureijat) in the South Hebron Hills, which is home to roughly 30 families. The forces demolished a home under construction and a wooden agricultural structure belonging to a family of three, including a minor, and confiscated a caravan used as worker accommodations during construction. The forces also demolished another agricultural structure owned by two families from the community.

On Sunday afternoon, 15 January 2023, Israeli soldiers returned to the Jordan Valley with a bulldozer and blocked two more rural access roads, south of the Palestinian community of Khirbet a-Ras al-Ahmar.

On Thursday, 12 January 2023, at around 1:00 P.M., Israeli soldiers came to the northern Jordan Valley with a bulldozer and built dirt mounds to block five roads used by communities east of Khirbet ‘Atuf and Khirbet a-Ras al-Ahmar to access farmlands in the area.

On Wednesday, 11 January 2023, at around 9:30 A.M., Civil Administration personnel came with a military escort and a tow-truck to the community of ‘Ein Samia, which lies about 150 meters off the Allon Road in Ramallah District, and dismantled and confiscated a tent that was home to a family of six.

On Wednesday, 11 January 2023, at around 7:00 A.M., Civil Administration personnel came with a military and Border Police escort and a bulldozer to the village of al-Baq'ah in Hebron District and demolished a two-story home that was intended for a family of 11, including eight minors.

The forces then continued south to Khallet al-Furn, southeast of Hebron, where they demolished the stone home of a family of six, including four minors.

On Wednesday, 11 January 2023, at around 4:00 P.M., representatives of the Jordan Valley regional settlement council came to the area of Khirbet a-Ras al-Ahmar in the northern Jordan Valley and summoned soldiers, who confiscated a tractor with a wagon and detained the owner for about an owner on the pretext that he was in a closed military zone. The soldiers took the tractor to a nearby military camp.