Dr. Elham Shamali
The families of the Palestinian village of the Red Khan are undergoing a desperate battle with the Israeli occupation, led by the extremist right-wing party which calls for the displacement of the village's citizens, demolition of 25 Bedouin communities and confiscation of thousands of Palestinian dunums extending from the eastern mountainsides to the Dead Sea. What is currently happening in this village is no different from the occupied Al-Aghwar, Al-Quds and West Bank as all of which suffer colonial invasion. At times, Al-Quds neighborhoods of Silwan, Sheikh Jarrah and Batn Al-Hawa are attacked, and at other times, the West Bank villages of Jabal Subaih and Turmus Aya are assaulted.
Today, the Red Khan comes to the surface again. The ethnic cleansing policy practiced against the Bedouin existence has been a main feature of the Israeli occupation state. It does not recognize neither the Bedouins' villages nor their property of lands, tightens the grip around them by all possible means, rejects to provide such communities with electricity and water lines, and refuses to allow any constructions there. Life inside those communities is almost primitive. Thus, all such practices fall under an Israeli policy that aims to voluntarily displace them, gather whoever stays in small groups that can be easily controlled and dismantled through identifying the grazing areas under what is known as "natural reserves" and preventing them from reaching the 1948 occupied lands of Al-Quds by military orders.
The origins of the Red Khan village go back to Arab Al-Jahalin Bedouin tribe, which was expelled from Tel Arad in the occupied Negev in 1952. However, this did not last for too long. In 1967, the village fell under the control of the Israeli occupation, when it entirely consolidated its control over Palestine by the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In 1975, the Ma'ale Adumim colonial settlement was established in the village, based on a scheme to Judaize Al-Quds, and was taken as an approach to clamp down on the city of Al-Quds by Judaizing it from the inside and isolating it from the outside. In an attempt to go on with the colonial endeavors, Kfar Adumim settlement was built around the Red Khan in 1979.
A disturbing state of dormancy has been overshadowing the village of the Red Khan since 2018, as the demolition of the village was extended; not cancelled due to the steadfastness of the village's families, and the support of the Palestinian resistance and the international institutions, which consider what is happening as a war crime punished by law, according to the International Criminal Court. This dormancy is accompanied by a strict siege over the Red Khan families. The colonial organizations did never take their plan of stealing the village lightly, particularly with the ascension of the extremist right-wing parties to the Israeli Knesset, including the Religious Zionism, and the participation of racist members like Minister of National Security Itmar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, who runs Regavim organization that does everything to demolish and evacuate the Red Khan. Moreover, the governmental coalition is based on understandings within the Zionist right wing in order to widen and expand the West Bank and Al-Quds settlements through the construction of 40 thousand settlement units instead of the Bedouin communities, the legitimization of the settlement outposts, and implementation of the annexation plan and evacuation of such communities, specially in Area C based on the Oslo Accords. This means making the Palestinian presence limited in Area A and B only.
The Israeli endeavors to evacuate the Red Khan have taken the serious nature in light of Netanyahu's racist government, whose coalition is vulnerable. This government wants to export its internal crises and coalition's contradictions, as satisfying the colonial settlers and rabbits has been its main concern. This will be achieved based on adopting a systematic plan dominated by the policy of ethnic cleansing and displacement of Palestinians, pressuring the Palestinian prisoners, increasing the level of raids into Al-Masjid Al-Aqsa, singling out the cities of the West Bank like Jenin, Nablus and Jericho without the need to an entire invasion of the West Bank as before, and blowing limited strikes against Gaza in fulfilment of previous promises by the Religious Zionism.
According to the colonial scheme of Greater Al-Quds, the Red Khan is the center of the colonial E1 project, whose completion requires the confiscation of 12 thousand dunums extending from eastern Al-Quds to the Dead Sea and the placement of a colonial belt that connects the settlements inside Al-Quds, eliminates the geographic and demographic unity of the West Bank between the north and the south and turns them into fragmented islands. Later on, the implementation of the colonial scheme for 2050 will start to expand the border of Al-Quds and annex the largest space of the West Bank lands so Al-Quds becomes the capital of the Israeli occupation entity, as Israel considers Al-Quds as a small area that is not good enough to be its capital. This scheme also aims to obliterate the Palestinian presence in Al-Quds. Thus, the Palestinians are undergoing a conflict of existence, geography and demography
The Palestinian response to what is happening in the Red Khan and the Sheikh Jarrah will not be like the past amid the revolutionary awareness of the promising Palestinian youth, like the Lions' Den and others. Failing this scheme requires a serious Palestinian movement with the participation of all Palestinians at the official and popular levels. All Palestinian movements must not be temporary, but permanent in order to end the Israeli occupation with its ongoing crimes and violations practiced against the Palestinian people.
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