by Saed Bannoura
Israeli soldiers invaded, on Wednesday at dawn, the Wa’r ad-Beik area of Anata town, north east of occupied East Jerusalem, and demolished six sheds. These sheds were home to six families, including five brothers and their families.
The Jerusalem Center for Social and Economic Rights (JCSER) reported that its Documentation Unit visited the area, and found out that the homes belong to five brothers identified as Jibril Jahalin and his family (5 members), Yousef Jahalin (8 members), Ahmad Jahalin (5 members), Mousa Jahalin (8 members), Jamila Jahalin (5 members), and Mariam Jahalin (5 members).
The families have been subject to constant harassment and threats not only by Israeli soldiers and policemen, but also by armed Israeli settlers who want to install and expand their illegal colonies and their illegal settlement outposts.
Al-Jahalin is one of dozens of Palestinian villages that are “unrecognized” by Israel, an issue that enables the Israeli army, and its military occupation enforced laws, to harass the residents, repeatedly displace them, and demolish their sheds and structures.
Residents of al-Jahalin are originally an area north of Be’er Al Sabe’ (Be'er Sheva), and were forced out of their lands by armed Israeli groups and soldiers in 1950. Their lands were then illegally taken away and became under Israeli control.
After the 1967 six-day war, several families fled to Jordan, and the remaining residents of were targeted again, and their area was placed under strict and arbitrary Israeli military orders.
Some residents of al-Jahalin were forced into exile in Jordan, while the rest were forced to relocate in areas in East Jerusalem, and Jericho.
In the 1970’s, fifty families of al-Jahalin settled in an area incorporated into the Abu Dis district, in occupied East Jerusalem, and in the mid 1990’s, Israel’s illegal settlement activities resulted in repeated attacks against them; an issue that led to demolitions, and attempts to remove them from the area. The attacks continued and witnessed a sharp escalation starting approximately two years ago.
After the Oslo Peace Agreement was signed between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization in 1993, al-Jahalin area was classified as area “C”, and issue that placed the village under full Israeli administrative and security control under the military, and was even regarding as an “uninhibited area” leading to more hardships and suffering among its residents.
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