US senator urges Israel not to destroy Bedouin village

By Michael Hernandez

WASHINGTON (AA) – U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein issued a direct appeal to Israel on Thursday to abandon plans to demolish a strategically placed bedouin village.

“The only reason to destroy this community is to expand nearby Israeli settlements and split the West Bank in half, ” Feinstein said on Twitter, stressing “the potential for peace depends on what happens to Khan al Ahmar. ”

Israel earlier Thursday razed a symbolic “village” in East Jerusalem erected by Palestinian activists to protest Israel's plan to demolish Khan al-Ahmar.

Dozens of Palestinian activists hastily erected the symbolic village, known as al-Wadi al-Ahmar, earlier this week. It consisted of five homes built of tin and wood before it was demolished.

Walid Assaf, the head of an anti-settlement commission affiliated with the Palestine Liberation Organization, told Anadolu Agency the destruction of al-Wadi al-Ahmar was likely a prelude to the imminent demolition of nearby Khan al-Ahmar and the eviction of its inhabitants.

The symbolic village was built as a means to protest Israel’s plan to demolish Khan al-Ahmar to make way for its massive E1 settlement project.

Israel seeks to expel 10,000 bedouin residents in the E1 zone — which sits on 15 square kilometers (9 square miles) of land in East Jerusalem — to build 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 — a central tenet of the long-sought two-state solution.

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