Israel notifies homes, school in Bedouin community near Jerusalem

Israeli authorities notified Sunday 40 homes and a school in Khan Al-Ahmar area north east of Jerusalem city.

Sources from the Bedouin community of Khan Al-Ahmar said that the Israeli told the families that they should leave before Feb. 23 ahead of demolishing their homes and barracks that represent their main source of living.

The sources added that the majority of 50 families in the community received the notifications but "they will not leave the area, and they will hold their grounds."

Khan Al-Ahmar Bedouin community is located between two Israeli settlements of Maale Adumim and Kfar Adumim in East Jerusalem and most of its residents live in tin houses and tents.

Head of the PNA's Colonization and Settlements Resistance Commission Walid Assaf said in an emailed press statement that those eviction notifications "are part of the systematic ethnic cleansing policy that Israel is implementing against Bedouin communities in the E1 settlement project area in order to annex more lands east of Jerusalem to Israeli settlements."

Palestinian Minister of Education Sabri Saidam warned against the consequences of demolishing the school that is serving a number of Bedouin communities in the area of Jerusalem desert.

Saidam condemned that demolition order and urged the international organizations to intervene immediately to halt "Israel's racist policies."

Palestinians want to declare the eastern part of the Jerusalem city, which was occupied by Israel since 1967, as the capital of their future state, while Israel, which annexes the eastern part of the city insists that the whole city is its eternal capital. Endit