CPTnet
12 May 2011
SOUTH HEBRON HILLS: Israeli military prolongs Amniyr closure; CPT releases video on recent evacuation
The Israeli army renewed the ‘closed military zone’ order for the village of Amniyr until Monday, May 16, effectively keeping Palestinian owners off their land for at least another week.
CPT has released a video of the evacuation of Amniyr, a Palestinian village south of Yatta, carried out by the Israeli military on Friday, May 6. After declaring the area a closed military zone, soldiers and police chased away the families who own the land with tear gas and sound grenades. The previous day at 5 a.m., the military destroyed six shacks and uprooted 150 olive trees in Amniyr, demolishing all the structures in the village for the third time in about ten weeks.
On January 19, 2011, the Israeli occupation authorities delivered demolition, evacuation and halt construction orders. Since then, the village was completely demolished on February 22, then again on March 29, after the Palestinians of Amniyr had rebuilt their homes. According to the Applied Research Institute in Jerusalem (ARIJ) and the Land Research Center (LRC), the owners of the 88 dunums of land targeted by the evacuation order have original ownership documents from the Turkish Ottoman era.
In the last fifteen years, Palestinians in the area have endured several waves of eviction and land confiscation. Using military orders to establish closed military areas, “security zones” and a “National Park” prohibited to Palestinians, the Israeli authorities have thereby restricted the land accessible to Palestinians. The occupation authorities have also destroyed cisterns and caves and denied basic services to the Palestinian families still living on their land, while allowing Israeli settlers to build homes and facilities on the confiscated land.
For background information on the area see https://www.poica.org/editor/case_studies/view.php?recordID=3002.
