Latest news with #KhalletAlDabaa
BreakingNews.ie
3 days ago
- General
- BreakingNews.ie
Woman deported by Israel says 'governments are completely ignoring' the West Bank
A Swedish woman who was arrested along with Irish national Deirdre 'D' Murphy (71) by Israeli military on Saturday has spoken of the escalating violence happening all over the West Bank. Susanne Björk told RTÉ radio's Morning Ireland that 'our governments' were completely ignoring the situation 'not just in Gaza, but also in the West Bank. Advertisement 'It's people like D and myself who come out there just to try and document what's happening and provide some solidarity with the Palestinian people and families.' Both of the women volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and were ordered to leave the village of Khallet al-Dabaa in Masafer Yatta in the southern part of the occupied West Bank on Saturday. Palestinians stand on the rubble of a demolished building in the village of Khallet al-Dabaa in the Masafer Yatta area of the occupied West Bank, after Israeli forces destroyed 95% of all the houses, displacing about 100 people. Photo: John Wessels/AFP via Getty A spokesperson for ISM said they were complying with the order when they were arrested by Israeli settlers, who were wearing military uniform as they are reservists, who then called police and detained Ms Murphy and Ms Björk. The two activists were ordered to appear at a deportation hearing at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv on Sunday where they were issued with deportation orders. Ms Björk was deported on Monday but Ms Murphy is fighting the deportation order and is currently still in a detention centre at Ben Gurion Airport. Advertisement Ms Björk said she and other volunteers went to the region 'because the situation is so horrible. This village, all over the West Bank, obviously the situation, is horrendous. People are absolutely terrified and the escalation of violence and settler violence and demolitions happening all over the West Bank is just horrendous and no one's reporting on this. I mean our governments are completely ignoring the situation not just in Gaza, but also in the West Bank. It's people like Dee and myself who are highlighting the situation.' A view of the area after the Israeli army destroyed Palestinian homes in the village of Khallet al-Dabaa. Photo: Mosab Shawer/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty This was the first time that Ms Björk had been arrested, but it was not the first time she had experienced such intimidation. Ireland Irish pensioner 'facing deportation' from Israel Read More 'Usually that would have meant a ban from a certain area, perhaps, that you were not allowed to enter that area. But my lawyer said that this is a new policy that they've implemented in the last few months, where they arrest people and deport people straight away and send them to immigration hearing at Ben Gurion. And this is, I think, quite a new policy. 'They're just trying to get rid of anyone who tried to document the reality of the occupation and the war crimes taking place.' Advertisement When asked if she would return, Ms Björk said she would if she could, but it seemed unlikely because she did not receive any of the documentation she was promised at the police hearing. 'They were supposed to provide us with an English transcript of the interview. I never received that. I also didn't receive any protocol from the immigration hearing.'
Jordan Times
07-05-2025
- Politics
- Jordan Times
Palestinians in razed West Bank hamlet vow to stay
Palestinians check the destruction at a UNRWA school housing displaced people, following an Israeli strike in the Bureij refugee camp in the centre of the Gaza Strip, on May 7, 2025 (AFP photo) KHALLET AL-DABAA, PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES — Standing in the rubble of what used to be his home, Palestinian farmer Haitham Dababseh cleared stones to make space for a tent after Israeli army bulldozers destroyed his village in the occupied West Bank. Residents of Khallet al-Dabaa and other hamlets in the West Bank's Masafer Yatta region have for years contended with violence from Israeli settlers and repeated the bulldozers that descended on Khallet al-Dabaa on Monday carried out "the biggest demolition we've ever had", said Dababseh, razing to the ground the hamlet that is home to about 100 forces "came here in the past, they demolished three times, four times", the 34-year-old farmer told AFP, but never entirely destroyed a hamlet this size in Masafer Yatta."I just have my clothes. Everything I have is under the rubble."Behind him, his 86-year-old father struggled to move the house's former door out of the way so that they can set up their al-Dabaa is one of several villages featured at length in the Oscar-winning documentary "No Other Land", recounting the struggles of the Palestinian residents of the area in the West Bank's south, a frequent target of settler violence and army of the communities shown in the documentary have experienced settler attacks or army demolitions since it won an Academy Award in protectionSeveral years after occupying the West Bank in 1967, the Israeli army had declared Masafer Yatta a restricted firing forces regularly demolish structures that the military authorities say were built illegally in the area, where about 1,100 Palestinians live across several hamlets."Enforcement authorities of the Civil Administration dismantled a number of illegal structures that were built in a closed military zone in the South Hebron Hills," the Israeli military told AFP in a statement on the Khallet al-Dabaa demolition."The enforcement actions were carried out after the completion of all required administrative procedures and in accordance with the enforcement priority framework previously presented to the Supreme Court," it residents, and many of their ancestors, once lived in caves in the rocky terrain to escape the area's stifling summer heat, and built houses with stone and other materials after the Israeli firing zone designation in the said he was the first member of his family to be born in a hospital and not a lamented that the army had blocked the entry to the cave near the family home where his father and grandfather were the middle of Khallet al-Dabaa, what served as a health and community centre is now a pile of broken concrete with no walls.A torn logbook that an aid organisation used to record residents' medical check-ups lay under the outside wall of the only structure left standing, a painted mural read "Let me live".Mohammed Rabaa, head of the nearby Tuwani village council which has jurisdiction over Khallet al-Dabaa, told AFP that the foreign aid his community received was useless if the world "can't protect it". 'I'm not leaving'According to Rabaa, "nine settler outposts were established in the Masafer Yatta area" since October 2023, when war began in the separate Palestinian territory of the Gaza West Bank is home to about three million Palestinians, but also some 500,000 Israelis living in settlements that are illegal under international outposts, built without the authorities' prior approval, are considered illegal under Israeli law too although enforcement is relatively settlers who live in the nearby outposts "attack homes, burn property, destroy and vandalise" with full impunity and often under army protection, said him, they aim to force Palestinians to leave and "do not want any Palestinian presence".The day after Khallet al-Dabaa was razed, Israel's Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right politician who lives in a settlement, expressed his hope that the government would formally annex the territory Ibrahim Dababseh, a 76-year-old woman who has lived in Khallet al-Dabaa for six decades, said she would not leave under any circumstances."I told them, 'make my grave right here'," she said of the Israeli soldiers, adding that they had to drag her out of her now ruined house."I didn't even get to wear my clothes properly," she said, sitting with her granddaughters on a rock under the shade of an olive Dababseh, a distant relative of Umm Ibrahim, said that hardships would not make him leave either."Last night, I slept there," he said, pointing to a bed exposed to the elements on the hilltop. "I have a bed, okay, I will cover myself with the sky, but I'm not leaving."
