The European Union and the United States have both urged Israel to halt its demolitions of illegal Palestinian structures after close to 500 have been razed this year.
“We continue to demand that Israel ceases forcible transfers, evictions, demolitions and confiscations of homes, all of which constitute violations of international humanitarian law,” Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff, head of the European Union Representative Office, said Monday.
Since Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s government was sworn in on June 13, 159 Palestinian structures have been destroyed, including 28 donor-funded structures, displacing 231 Palestinians, the EU Representative Office said.
All the demolished structures were illegally built.
The EU, European countries and the UN often provide funding to the Palestinians for housing, including illegally built structures in Area C of the West Bank, which is under IDF military and civilian control. Most of the demolished structures and the donated ones are modular construction, such as tents and huts for Palestinian and/or Bedouin herding communities.
“The EU has also repeatedly called for the restitution or compensation of EU-funded humanitarian assets which have been demolished, dismantled or confiscated by Israel,” Burgsdorff said.
“The number of total [Palestinian] structures destroyed under the new government has increased by 148% compared to the same period last year, and 28 times more donor-funded structures have been destroyed,” his office said.
Overall this year, at least 474 Palestinian-owned structures, including 150 funded by donors, had been razed by the IDF, displacing 656 people, including 359 children, in Area C, the EU office said.
“This represents a 32% increase in [the] number of structures demolished or seized” since last year, and of those, “over [a] 145% increase in donor-funded structures, and a near-70% increase in the number of people displaced,” it said.
On Monday, Burgsdorff led a delegation of 12 European diplomats to visit two herding communities that have lost homes in the last month, Ras al-Tin and Humsa.
BOTH HUMSA and Ras al-Tin are located in IDF firing zones. The UN, the EU and the US have opposed the demolitions on humanitarian grounds. The UN and the EU have argued that the Palestinians have a right to shelter in a situation where Israel’s Civil Administration rarely grants building permits in Area C of the West Bank, which is under IDF military and civilian control.
According to the UN, which also opposed the demolitions and tracks such razings, the IDF on July 14 confiscated 49 structures in the Palestinian Bedouin community of Ras al-Tin, displacing 84 people, including 53 children.
The community is located in Area C of the West Bank, near Ramallah. The community was in the news last year, when the IDF, according to the UN, twice demolished a “ceiling used for the community’s sole school” and “chairs and building material.”
Separately, the IDF on July 15 confiscated a structure that housed a family of eight, including six children in the Palestinian village of Humsa in the Jordan Valley.
Two weeks ago, the IDF razed 30 structures in Humsa al-Bqai’a. The IDF has already moved against Palestinian and Bedouin families in Humsa numerous times this year.
The Israeli Right has argued that the illegal Palestinian construction is part of a deliberate plan by the Palestinian Authority to seize control of Area C to prevent the application of Israeli sovereignty over that territory.
The delegation that visited the communities included diplomats from Belgium, Denmark, the EU, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK.
When quizzed about the matter in Washington on Friday, State Department deputy spokeswoman Jalina Porter frowned on such action.
“We believe it is critical to refrain from any unilateral steps that increase tensions and make it more difficult to advance a negotiated two-state solution, and of course, this includes demolition,” she said.
“President [Joe] Biden, now obviously Secretary [Antony] Blinken as well, have always said that the US will center our foreign policy on human rights, and that has not changed,” she added.
The US and Israel have clashed in recent weeks over Israel’s policy of demolishing the family home of Palestinians indicted for or found guilty of terrorist attacks in which Israelis are killed.
Earlier this month, it took down the family homes of Palestinian-American Muntasir Shalabi, who was indicted for killing Yehuda Guetta, 19, at Tapuah junction in a terrorist attack in May.
Still, there was little public tension around the visit of US Deputy Assistant Secretary for Israel and Palestinian Affairs Hady Amr.
Upon its conclusion, the State Department said he had had “productive” meetings with Israelis and Palestinians. He was “guided by the objective of the United States to advance equal measures of freedom, security, and prosperity for Israelis and Palestinians alike in ways that are tangible, and achievable in the near term and beyond,” the State Department said in a statement.
“His visit successfully advanced the goal of deepening understanding with Israelis and Palestinians in this regard,” it added.
“The current focus of the United States is on improving the situation on the ground and relations between Israelis and Palestinians, which together are important in their own right, and are also important as a means ultimately to advance towards a comprehensive peace,” the State Department said on Friday after Amr departed.