ISRAELI settlers on Sunday began levelling a large tract of land in central Hebron in preparation for the construction of a new Jewish settlement outpost in the beleaguered southern West Bank city.
Israeli settlers escorted a bulldozer which uprooted fifty-year-old trees in the Tel Rumeida neighbourhood near the city centre, near an existing extremist right wing Israeli settlement.
A Palestinian official said that the Israeli liaison department notified the Palestinian side that Israeli authorities would do earthwork in the area for two months.
This notification, he added, suggests that Israelis plan to establish a new settlement outpost near the old one known as ‘Ramat Yashi’.
Spokesman for the Hebron activist group Youth Against Settlements, Issa Amr, highlighted that a mobile home was placed in the area after it was levelled by bulldozers.
This means a new outpost is being built, he added.
The land which was levelled was leased by the Abu Heikal family in 1949 from the Jordanian government’s Custodian of Enemy Property, Abu Heikal said.
A new lease was signed after Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967, with the Israeli government’s Custodian of Absentee Property, added Abu Heikal.
In 1981, the Custodian of Absentee Property refused to take the rent fees, but in 2000 the family reached an agreement with the Israelis and paid for the years 1981-2000.
In 2001 and 2002, he added, the Israelis continued to take rent fees and after that they refused them again and announced the land was a closed military zone, denying the Palestinians access to it, despite their long-standing lease over the area.
A fence was also built around the land.
Amr Issa said that the Israeli Civil Administration had rented the plot of land to Israeli settlers in a lease which came into effect on January 1st, 2014.
Five hundred Israeli settlers live in the Old City of Hebron, many of whom have illegally occupied Palestinian houses and forcibly removed the original inhabitants. They are protected by thousands of Israeli forces.
Settlers and Israeli forces regularly target locals in the overwhelmingly Palestinian city for harassment, and many have been forced from their homes as a result.
A 1997 agreement split Hebron into areas of Palestinian and Israeli control.
The Israeli military-controlled H2 zone includes the ancient Old City, home of the revered Ibrahimi Mosque, also split into a synagogue referred to as the Tomb of the Patriarchs, and the once thriving Shuhada street, now just shuttered shops fronts and closed homes.
Israeli troops stormed a village south of Hebron and assaulted three Palestinians on Saturday evening, locals said.
During the raid, Israeli forces tried to demolish the village’s traditional oven, which produces bread for more than 50 residents.
Tariq Hathalin said that Israeli soldiers raided the semi-nomadic village of Um al-Kher east of Yatta and attacked him, his sister, and an elderly man.
Hathalin explained that a group of soldiers escorted a settler from the nearby Israeli settlement of Karmel and tried to destroy the traditional ‘tabun’ oven in use by local villagers.
The attack came after settlers in the nearby houses claimed that smoke emanating from the oven disturbed them.
When Hathalin, his sister, and an elderly man, Suleiman Hathalin, tried to stop the demolition, the soldiers physically assaulted them before fleeing the scene.
More than 500,000 Israeli settlers live in settlements across the West Bank and East Jerusalem, in contravention of international law.
The internationally recognised Palestinian territories, of which the West Bank and East Jerusalem form a part, have been occupied by the Israeli military since 1967.
l Israeli authorities told the Palestinian Red Crescent that newly released Palestinian prisoner, Naim Shawamrah, would not be allowed to enter Jordan for treatment, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society said on Sunday.
Shawamrah, whose health has been deteriorating since before he was released from Israeli jails, was scheduled to head to Jordan for treatment mid-Sunday, Hebron PPS director Amjad al-Najjar said.
Al-Najjar said: ‘Everybody was surprised by the decision to reject him.
‘Preparations have been ongoing since Saturday, but the Red Crescent was notified of an Israeli decision to deny him entry to Jordan.’
Shawamrah was hospitalised late Wednesday due to serious deterioration in his health condition.
Doctors said his condition was worsening, and transferred him to al-Ahli Hospital in Hebron, al-Najjar said at the time.
Palestinian Authority (PA) Minister of Health, Jawad Awwad, met Saturday with Shawamrah’s doctor, along with members of his family and other PA officials, and planned to send the former prisoner to Jordan for treatment, a statement from the Ministry of Prisoners’ affairs said.
Shawamrah was released Tuesday morning along with 25 other Palestinian prisoners who were detained before the Oslo Accords.
He spent 19 years in Israeli jails and in 2013 was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy.
Throughout his final days in prison, he was unable to walk.
Israel agreed to release 104 Palestinian veteran prisoners from Israeli jails in conjunction with US-mediated peace talks with the PLO. Tuesday marked the release of the third round of prisoners.
l Egyptian authorities refused to allow an aid convoy headed for Gaza through the Rafah crossing, an activist committee said on Sunday.
A humanitarian aid convoy entitled ‘Miles of Smiles 24’ was prevented from entering the coastal enclave despite special arrangements made previously with Egyptian authorities to enter on Saturday, deputy manager of a Gaza government committee against the siege, Alaa al-Battah said.
Al-Battah stressed that the convoy was carrying humanitarian aid, including medicines and accommodation equipment, for Gaza residents who suffered serious property damages during the winter storm Alexa which hit the area in December.
The aid is accompanied by a convoy of 127 solidarity activists from Arab and European countries including Jordan, Algeria, Malaysia, UK, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco and Bahrain, among many others.
There have been frequent closures of the Rafah terminal in recent months due to political unrest in Egypt and violence in the Sinai peninsula.
The Rafah crossing has been the principal connection between Gaza’s 1.7 million residents and the outside world since the imposition of an economic blockade by Israel beginning in 2006-7.
The blockade has severely limited the imports and exports of the Gaza Strip and has led to frequent humanitarian crises and hardship for Gazans.
Israeli forces shot and injured two Palestinians east of Jabaliya in the northern Gaza Strip last Friday.
The shootings followed protests that broke out after the funeral procession of Adnan Abu Khater, 16, a Palestinian youth who died earlier on Friday after being shot by Israeli soldiers last Thursday.
A 21-year-old man from al-Shati refugee camp was shot in the foot near the eastern cemetery in Jabaliya. He was taken to Kamal Adwan hospital with moderate injuries.
A spokesman for the Gaza Ministry of Health said that another 26-year-old man was shot in the back by Israeli soldiers in a watchtower in the same area.
An Israeli army spokeswoman claimed that a ‘violent riot erupted’ after ‘dozens of Palestinians gathered’ and were ‘damaging the fence’ by throwing rocks and burning tyres.
‘During attempts to disperse the riots, soldiers opened fire at the instigators’ lower extremities and a hit was confirmed,’ she added.
Israeli forces frequently shoot at farmers and other civilians inside the Gaza Strip if they approach large swathes of land near the border that the Israeli military has deemed off limits to Palestinians.
The ‘security buffer zone’ extends between 500 metres and 1,500 metres into the Strip, effectively turning local farms into no-go zones.
An Egyptian-mediated ceasefire agreement was reached in November 2012 between Palestinian factions and Israel to end over a week of fighting which left over 170 Palestinians dead and more than a thousand injured.
Six Israelis were also killed during the fighting.
Since the agreement, Israeli forces have shot dozens of Gazans in border areas, and have launched frequent incursions.
