Lives of Hundreds of Palestinian Bedouins Threatened to Build Eastern Segment of the Apartheid Wall
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Lives of Hundreds of Palestinian Bedouins Threatened to Build Eastern Segment of the Apartheid Wall

***image2***The construction of the Apartheid Wall is entering its third phase of land confiscation and imprisonment of Palestinians. From the far north of the Jordan Valley down to its reaches in the south, Occupation Forces will forcibly remove hundreds of Palestinian Bedouins who have inhabited these lands for centuries, isolating 22,000 dunums behind the Wall from east Sawahra alone.

Sawahra is a village in southeast Jerusalem that was divided into two parts, west and east Sawahra. During the first phase of the Apartheid Wall construction, a wall was built between these two parts, cementing their separation and permanently dividing a community. Today, a new wall is being constructed to isolate east Sawahra from it’s lands. The people in the Sawahra villages are rooted in a Bedouin heritage, most who depend on raising herds of sheep and goats that graze in a landscape of more than 25,000 dunums. These lands begin at the container checkpoint in east Sawahra until the Dead Sea.

Only days ago, Occupation Forces distributed orders among the Bedouins and chippers to leave these lands that have now become a “forbidden military zone”. Orders were also given to Sawahra council declaring that Occupation Forces will confiscate 212 dunums to build the Wall between the east village and their lands. When the eastern segment of the Apartheid Wall is complete, 22,000 of the 25,000 inhabited dunums will be isolated. This will completely cripple the Palestinian cattle industry. More than 30 families depend and live on these threatened lands, using it for more than 7000 of their cattle, as well as 300 dunums for growing wheat and corn.

The Wall has become an integral part of the Zionist plans to rip apart the Palestinian people from their ancestral land, as well as dividing long-established social networks to dissolve Palestinian sovereignty. These are not new colonial strategies, but unthinkable in the 21st century that has witnessed the unstoppable force of de-colonization movements across the globe. While international attention focuses on the “disengagement” in Gaza and “re-location” of the colonial settlers who are being financially compensated with $300,000 checks, thousands of Palestinians are being displaced, losing their lands and homes through the Apartheid Wall under a shameful cloak of silence.

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