Israel shuts roads to Bedouin village facing demolition

By Qais Abu Samra

JERUSALEM

The Israeli army has closed all roads leading to Khan al-Ahmar, a Bedouin village in occupied East Jerusalem threatened with demolition.

Abdullah Abu Rahma, a local Palestinian official, told Anadolu Agency on Friday that Israeli army bulldozers had blocked all the roads leading to the village with large mounds of earth.

Despite an intense army and police presence, dozens of local residents and solidarity activists had tried -- unsuccessfully -- to keep the roads open, according to Abu Rahma.

Last week, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled to demolish Khan al-Ahmar and expel its Bedouin inhabitants.

The Israeli authorities hope to expel 10,000 Bedouin residents of the E1 Zone -- which sits on 15 square kilometers of land in East Jerusalem -- to make way for a series of new Jewish-only residential units linking Jerusalem to the Maale Adumim settlement.

If implemented, the plan would effectively cut the West Bank in two, thus preempting the emergence of a territorially-contiguous Palestinian state based on pre-1967 borders.