Palestinian villages face demolition to create IDF training ground | World news | The Guardian.
The villagers, supported by the evidence of Israel archaeologists and human rights groups, say their families have farmed the area since the late 1800s, certainly long before Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967.
For generations, these communities lived in caves tucked into the barren hillsides, protected from the wind, rain and summer heat. When these caves began to collapse in the late 90s, families gradually abandoned their traditional homes and built their current ones, patchwork constructions of improvised stonewalls, wooden struts and tarpaulin.
The structures were built without Israeli permission on land that Israel declared an “open firing zone” in the 1970s. As they stand in Area C, the 64% of the West Bank under full Israeli control, the state has ordered that they be demolished.
However, B’Tselem, an Israeli rights group, has argued that Israel has no legal justification to evict these villagers. “International human rights law demands a pressing military need. Training soldiers is not a pressing need. Israel can’t simply take any land it wishes on this basis,” said Sarit Michaeli, the group’s spokesperson.
In her case to the high court, Hila Gurani, the state’s attorney, wrote that the second intifada and the second Lebanon war exposed gaps in IDF preparation that requires more extensive training in firing zones, which the illegal Hebron residents are preventing. She also suggested that if the current residents were allowed to remain, they would gather intelligence on IDF methods or collect any weapons and equipment soldiers might leave behind to use in terrorist activity.
The court has given the Hebron villagers until 2 August to present their response – the latest round in a battle they have been fighting since 1999. Lawyers with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel advising them have vowed to pursue the case.
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