Israel must be called out for its criminal behaviour

The United Nations has voiced “concern”, and human rights groups have sounded the alarm, but that did not stop Israel on Wednesday from moving in its bulldozers to raze a Palestinian village in the Occupied West Bank.

There was a reprieve of sorts on Thursday with Israel’s Supreme Court temporarily suspending demolition of the Bedouin village whose fate has become a focus of Palestinian protests and international concern.

The legal breather notwithstanding, the sad truth of the matter is that Israel has shown complete disregard for human rights and international law. The world has to face the fact that these incidents are not isolated and are part of a systematic policy by Israel to expand Jewish colonies on Palestinian land in the Occupied West Bank.

The Khan Al Ahmar village is of particular importance to Israel due to its strategic location near a slew of already-established Jewish colonies near occupied East Jerusalem, along a road leading to the Dead Sea. Activists are concerned that continued Israeli colony construction in the area could effectively divide the West Bank into two. Forcible transfer is considered a violation of the Geneva Conventions. Israeli authorities claim the village and its school were built illegally.

Activists, however, say the villagers had little alternative but to build without Israeli construction permits as the documents are nearly impossible for Palestinians to obtain for that part of occupied West Bank. Israel has a systematic policy of making it difficult for Palestinians to build on their own land in an attempt to frustrate them and force them off it. Israeli demolitions of Palestinian homes are carried out regularly and under the pretext that owners did not obtain legal permits to build. Israel also demolishes homes of Palestinian activists as a part of its collective punishment policy.

What is evident is that world powers are turning a blind eye to Israel’s systematic aggressions, not only in the West Bank but most recently in Gaza, where it has managed to get away with shooting dead more than 130 peaceful protesters in the past few months.

It’s not enough to issue condemnations, it is time to take concrete action, including economic sanctions and the withholding of critical financial aid to the regime there. If this is not done, the history books will surely note the complicity of the international community in the subjugation of defenceless Palestinians and the usurpation of their land — a shameful stain that will be nearly impossible to remove.