Israeli Press
Israeli troops emptied a Palestinian home to inaugurate the Emek Dotan settlement
Graphic: Times of Palestine
Original Reporting
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The Israeli army evicted Hazem Hamad and his family from their house in Arraba, south of Jenin in the occupied West Bank, on Monday and turned the home into a temporary military post for the cornerstone ceremony of the new Emek Dotan settlement, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.
Hamad told the paper the army informed him of the eviction the previous evening. He left at seven in the morning with his wife and their five children — four girls and a boy — and soldiers held the house until one in the afternoon, when the family returned.
He said the troops did not damage the family's property, and that this was the first time the army had seized his home this way. For the ceremony the army also closed the road linking Arraba to the nearby town of Ya'bad.
Emek Dotan is one of the two settlements — with Noa, north of Qabatiya — for which Israel's Central Command signed fifteen land-seizure orders inside Area A in July, orders the Peace Now report published the same day calls the first used for openly civilian settlement since Oslo.
The paper places the ceremony in a pattern its own reporting traced six months ago: settlers, backed by the army, pushing Palestinians out of Area B homes through harassment, threats and violence.
Two weeks ago, according to Palestinian reports and footage cited by Haaretz, settlers set fire to a mosque in Qusra and struck the village of Kur, south of Tulkarem, spraying graffiti and stealing residents' property. Police said they arrested two settlers on suspicion of the arson.
