New Demolition Threats in Umm al-Kheir

In the middle of last week – Wednesday Nov. 12 – the soldiers from the occupation civil administration appeared again in the two Umm al-Kheir clusters, next to the settlement of Carmel in south Mt. Hebron. In their old tradition of “civil service”, they distributed 11 orders of halting constructing work – the legalistic act which precedes house demolition.

As the people of those two clusters of Umm al-Kheir, don’t have much of construction work left – most of their constructed houses were demolished in the many rounds of house demolition that were inflicted on them by the civil administration (see also here the 2007 demolition, in which Ezra Nawi was charged while trying to stop it)– the current halt-construction orders were addressed mostly to tents (donation of the Red Cross form the last round of demolitions), tin shacks, an outhouse and a toilet hole, along with three built houses located in the farthest spot form the settlement.

This indiscriminate mode of operation reveals the real end of the civil administration acts – to make the life of the local residents (who had lived there for 30 years before the establishment of the Israeli settlement in the 1980’s) so unbearable, so they would leave there dwellings out of their “free will”.

Ehud Krinis