The roughly 200 Palestinian villagers of Ein Samiya have been forcibly displaced by the Israeli army and settlers in what rights groups call a ‘war crime’ [Aziza Nofal/Al Jazeera]
The 200 villagers were forced to leave their land after years of Israeli settler and army violence.
Ramallah, occupied West Bank – Years of violent attacks and restrictions by the Israeli army and settlers have forced the roughly 200 villagers of Ein Samiya out of their homes in what rights groups call a “war crime”. Among the villagers are 78 children whose school was singled out for demolition by Israeli authorities.
The last families remaining in the village, which had shrunk by 30 percent under constant harassment, loaded their belongings onto trucks on Wednesday, 44 years after they first settled there.
“These families are not leaving by choice,” said the Acting Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Yvonne Helle.
“The Israeli authorities have repeatedly demolished homes and other structures they own and have threatened to destroy their only school [while] land available for the grazing of livestock has decreased due to settlement expansion and both children and adults have been subjected to settler violence.”
“We were born and raised here, but they have made our lives unbearable,” 33-year-old Sumoud Ibrahim, who was displaced along with her husband and four children, told Al Jazeera.
Ein Samiya was built on private land owned by Palestinians living in the nearby village of Kafr Malek who allowed the migratory herders to settle there. The families had lived in the al-Auja area of the Jordan Valley before that, constantly moving.
In the 1990s, under the Oslo Accords, their village was classified as being in Area C – the 60 percent of the occupied West Bank controlled by the Israeli military, which severely restricts Palestinian construction and development in the area through demolitions, fines and other punishments.
They still rely on livestock and herding as their primary source of income and live in simple homes made of aluminium and tin due to these restrictions, many of which were built with funding from the European Union.
Now they have left their homes behind and have moved to open lands in the relatively nearby village of al-Mughayyir – which is attacked often by settlers – and the al-Nuwaimah area of the Jordan Valley.
The residents are worried that those areas are not much safer but feel that, regardless, it will still be better for them.
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By: Miss Cherry May Timbol –Independent Reporter
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