Bethlehem– The village of Al-Malha in the Za’tara desert near the city of Bethlehem in the southern West Bank received Israeli notices a few days ago to demolish 10 homes in it, in a move described as the most dangerous, not only because it comes at a time when Palestinians are experiencing all forms of displacement and destruction at the hands of the occupation, but also because it undermines the Palestinian presence, especially in Area B, and destroys the Palestinians’ dream and hopes of living in safety.
The demolition decision in Area B dates back to July 18, and the commander of the central region in the occupation army, Major General Avi Blot – according to what the Israeli Channel 7 reported at the time – signed executive orders to demolish Palestinian buildings in Al-Maliha and restrict the construction of new homes.
The regional and administrative divisions of the West Bank, called “A,” “B,” “C,” or “C,” emerged as one of the most prominent outcomes of the Oslo Accords between the Palestinians and Israel in 1993, and remained the most present among them due to their daily experience with them.
The agreement also gave the Palestinian Authority, which emerged from it, powers to operate in Areas A, administratively and security-wise, and B, administratively for the Palestinians and security-wise subject to Israel, with full Israeli control over Area C.
Areas A and B are estimated to constitute about 21% of the West Bank (about 5,800 square kilometers), and 18.4% of the West Bank, where more than 90% of the Palestinians live, and on which they pin their hopes of remaining on their land. Areas C, meanwhile, constitute more than 61% of the West Bank’s total area, where approximately 10% of the Palestinians live.
Displacement from its widest doors
By targeting Area B in the village of Al-Malha, Israel has hammered the first nail into the coffin of the actual displacement of Palestinians outside their homeland, or piling them up in oppressive and stressful conditions until they eventually reach the same bitter choice, after it tightened its grip on Area C, expelled its residents, and restricted the presence of those who remained with military conditions and procedures that exhausted them.
With great panic, the people of Al-Maliha received notices of the demolition of their homes, which they thought they would be safe from in light of the occupation’s attacks and violations against the Palestinians. They began their objection and legal procedures against the Israeli decision, and demonstrated in rejection of it.
Murad Jadal, head of the Malha village council, said that they are confronting the Israeli “annexation and expansion plan” on the ground, and are challenging an extremist political plan based on withdrawing Palestinian authority in all areas, demolishing all signed agreements, and “demolishing Oslo in its entirety.”
Jadal told Tel Aviv Tribune Net, “If it is not addressed, the occupation will expand its decisions in Area B. The target is not 10 homes out of 450 homes in the village of Al Malha, but rather it will target the entire reserve, and then move on with the same approach to reach Area A.”
Reserves and monuments
In 1997, the Wye River Agreement designated the Bethlehem Wilderness as a nature reserve for the Palestinians, estimated at 3% (167 square kilometers) of the West Bank, extending from southern Jerusalem to northern Hebron, passing through eastern Bethlehem.
Through two orders, the occupation targeted Area B and its nature reserves, such as Bethlehem, by withdrawing the planning authority’s powers and preventing it from granting new building permits and demolishing buildings there, in addition to buildings near archaeological sites in Area B, estimated at around 600 sites.
According to Amir Daoud, the documentation officer at the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission (an official body), with this measure, the occupation is ringing the bell of “danger and destruction together” on two levels: the first is geopolitical, as it prevents the establishment of a Palestinian state on a torn and controlled geography. The second is that it eliminates hope regarding the idea of a state in the Palestinian collective mind, forcing the Palestinian presence into squares in the form of islands and densely populated residential blocs within cities without geographical continuity.
“They killed the Palestinian, so are they unable to take his land? We are facing a plan that Smotrich put forward in 2017 and called the decisive plan, in which the Palestinian either remains submissive, or emigrates, or is killed if he refuses,” Dawoud says.
With these measures, the occupation, according to Daoud, has erased every foundation on which the Oslo Accords were built and has left nothing of it. It is storming cities and villages, destroying the infrastructure, and executing citizens. He adds, “Israel has destroyed Oslo and its outcomes, and destroyed the land that is the essence of the conflict and the origin of the idea of the state.”
Security coordination
The Secretary-General of the Palestinian National Initiative, Mustafa Barghouti, agrees with everything that Daoud said, and said that what is happening is a nullification of what Minister Smotrich announced, literally, that he would strip the Palestinian Authority of any civil powers in Area B, just as the occupation army stripped the Authority of any presence in Area A.
Barghouti told Tel Aviv Tribune Net, “Nothing remains of the Oslo Accords. They all buried it and Israel killed it completely. The Palestinian Authority is the one that clings to it, and I don’t know why? The only thing that remains of Oslo is the security coordination that opposes the interests of the Palestinian people.”
Therefore, Barghouti expected that the demolition would expand to Area B and also affect Area A, and that the storming and demolition taking place in these areas under security pretexts is a prelude to that, as Israel, by targeting Area B, has now taken control of 82% of the West Bank.
According to Barghouti, what the extremist occupation government approves and its army does indicates the Palestinian Authority’s inability to do anything else, “and despite that, they in the Authority do not realize that it is time to get rid of all of Oslo and its burdens.”
For his part, Palestinian politician and former Deputy Speaker of the Legislative Council, Hassan Khreisha, believes that the occupation, through its incursions and raids on all sites subject to Palestinian sovereignty, is implementing what the occupation government has adopted, and has dropped all the distinctions between “A,” “B,” and “C,” and thus the entire land has become targeted, and that “nothing remains of Oslo except the name and the signature.”
More dangerous than that, Khreisha told Tel Aviv Tribune Net, is that “the occupation, whether the government or the opposition, has begun to reject the one-state or two-state solution, and therefore the bet on settlements and the establishment of a Palestinian state is an illusion that they have sold to us all along.”
He stressed that the aim of the occupation’s measures in Areas B and A is to regain full control over the West Bank so that it becomes under Israeli military rule led by Smotrich.