Democracy for the Arab World Now:

The Biden Administration should reevaluate its “special relationship” with Israel if the Israeli government advances its plans to forcibly displace the Palestinian villagers of Khan al-Ahmar and destroy the village in the occupied West Bank, war crimes under international law. On Wednesday, February 1, 2023, the Israeli government is required to inform the country’s High Court of Justice whether, and when, it intends to carry out its long-delayed plans to demolish the entire village.

“Israel’s promised destruction of Khan al-Ahmar and E-1 is no longer the tipping point that makes the two-state solution impossible—that’s moot at this stage,” said Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man, Director of Research for Israel-Palestine at DAWN. “But the Israeli government publicly and defiantly declaring its plan to commit war crimes should be a tipping point for the Biden Administration’s relationship with Israel writ large.”

Why is Khan al-Ahmar Important?

Khan al-Ahmar is a village populated by Palestinians who were expelled from the Negev region of Israel in 1948 and resettled in the Jerusalem Governorate of the West Bank, then under the control of Jordan. After Israel captured and occupied the West Bank in 1967, it included Khan al-Ahmar in the municipal boundaries of the illegal Jewish-only settlement of Ma’ale Adumim. The village is also one of the last remaining Palestinian enclaves in a strategic area referred to by Israel as E1, which if depopulated of its Palestinian residents would effectively cut off the northern and southern West Bank. The United States and others have warned such a move would preclude the creation of a contiguous Palestinian state. [Continue reading…]