Posted on April 11, 2014, by & filed under News.


….That doesn’t mean they have given up trying. Thus ends Jeff Halper’s latest analysis of the virulent rate and spread of home demolitions within East Jerusalem, in the West Bank and displacement of Bedouins and others in the Jordan valley since 1967.

In his latest analysis, “Demolishing homes, demolishing peace”, Halper, a Professor of Anthropology, writes: ‘”Demolition” is only the visible part of the problem, of course. Displacement caused by lack of access to water or agricultural land and the actual expropriation of lands necessary for the continuation of Palestinian communal life is the real point of the demolition policy.’

Great Britain has a shameful history of this sort of thing in Scotland and Ireland. We call them “the Clearances”. More recently the term “ethnic cleansing” has become commonplace for such policies of displacement of indigenous groups from their homes and land.

Professor Ilan Pappe of Exeter University, born and brought up in Israel, insisted in his address last Saturday to the ICAHD UK 2014 Conference that “occupation” is not a word which reflects the reality in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. It should be called nothing less than ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and Bedouins. Israeli Arabs too are feeling the pressure of displacement now.

See Jeff’s article ‘Demolishing homes, demolishing peace’ in full on ICAHD website. Click here.