h/t to mettle fatigue who first broke this story here on Monday.
For more background on Khan Al-Ahmar, see my Sep. 30 diary, or this diary and earlier ones by SandraLLAP.
On Sunday the Israeli government announced retreat from its plan to forcibly destroy the small West Bank Palestinian village of Khan Al-Ahmar and move its residents to a site near an East Jerusalem garbage dump. Instead, the plan is now for a few hundred m relocation, to be determined upon mutual agreement with the residents.
This is pretty much what the residents had asked for in their last High Court of Justice case earlier this year, only to be ignored by the government and rejected by the court which couldn't find anything procedurally wrong with the government plan.
Of course, the Israeli High Court for all its vaunted image, cannot find much wrong in the concept of settling Israeli citizens inside the West Bank - a flagrant violation of international law, particularly when the intent is clearly permanent settlement in order to unilaterally diminish the Palestinian territories. Ironically, two of the current Justices are themselves illegal settlers, but even before them the Court has tended to side with the Occupation regime while throwing the occasional lip-service to common decency. The Court also finds nothing wrong with the Occupation authorities' record of nearly 100% rejection of development plans submitted by Palestinian residents, or for that matter in the sustaining of residents in a rightless status under martial law for 51 years and counting, and making all critical life decisions for them with no formal recourse, except appeal to said Court.
But I digress.
The residents of this small village, until that announcement a non-entity and a nuisance in the eyes of official Israel, are suddenly a party to come to terms with. It might be only the teeniest of dents in the Occupation’s multiple armors, but for the residents and the diverse group of activists supporting them, this is a huge victory. Particularly because Sunday's surprising about-face came at a time when residents were expecting each day to be their village's last day.
Typical Occupation scene at Khan Al-Ahmar before the announcement.