US Senator Urges Israel Not to Destroy Khan Al-Ahmar

US Senator Dianne Feinstein. (Photo: via Facebook)

US Senator Dianne Feinstein issued a direct appeal to Israel on Thursday to abandon plans to demolish a strategically placed bedouin village, Anadolu reports.

Feinstein said on Twitter:

“The only reason to destroy this community is to expand nearby Israeli settlements and split the West Bank in half … 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.

(MEMO, PC, Social Media)

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