Israel wiping off Palestine off the map of the earth, one village at a time : 3 small Palestinian villages emptied out this summer. Residents blame Israeli settler attacks

The Palestinian hamlet of al-Qabun in the central occupied West Bank was silent this week — the grazing fields for sheep deserted, the empty schoolhouse locked, the makeshift homes left as steel carcasses.

The last families living there packed up two weeks ago, driven from their homes of nearly three decades by what they said was a year of intensified attacks and harassment by armed Jewish settlers living in unauthorized outposts on neighboring hilltops.

“I feel like I’m a refugee here, and settlers are the owners of our land,” said Ali Abu Kbash, a shepherd who fled al-Qabun with his four children and 60 sheep for the rocky slopes of a neighboring village. He said life had become unbearable as settlers tried to take over his fields with their sheep, tampered with the village’s water supply, and routinely burst into his village to harass residents.

"The displacement of Palestinians amid increasing settler violence is of a magnitude that we have not previously documented,” said Andrea De Domenico, head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the occupied Palestinian territory. Settler attacks have displaced nearly 500 Palestinians, including 261 children, in the past year and a half, the office estimates.

Many Bedouin communities in Area C have been slated for expulsion because they could not secure permission to build. According to anti-settlement watchdog group Peace Now, over 95% of Palestinian building permits are rejected. The military routinely issues demolition orders for homes of corrugated tin and scrap wood. Last week, authorities leveled a European Union-funded schoolhouse in the Bedouin hamlet of Ein Samiya, which 150 residents recently fled — virtually guaranteeing they would not return soon.

#Israel #Palestine #Occupation #Apartheid #WestBank #Terrorism #UN #GoodOccupation

https://www.yahoo.com/news/3-small-palestinian-villages-emptied-054552457.html