House Demolition in Halhoul
At 8am I received a call from Rabbis for Human Rights to say that the Israeli army had already begun a house demolition on the edge of Halhoul with a possibility that more houses would be destroyed. Three of us set off for Halhoul, a small town just outside Hebron, immediately. When we got there we discovered that the demolition had begun at 7 am and there was not much left of the house. A large crowd of Palestinians had gathered and Israeli Border Police were keeping everyone well back from the 2 Caterpillar diggers.
The house was still under construction and was owned by Ahmed Ibrahim Assouni Abu Yousef. He did have the correct permits from the municipality of Halhoun but the army said it was too close to the main road to Bethlehem. In fact it was more than 400 metres from the road.
The owner asked the Shabbab ( Palestinian youths) not to throw stones and for everyone to move back from the army. Human Rights Workers positioned themselves in the next house which has been threatened with demolition and filmed from there. This house is owned by Sayeed Abu Yousef. The army ordered him to stop construction a month ago. There are at least two other houses under construction which have received warnings from the army.
Palestinian youth set up a road block to slow the army from leaving. The army made no attempt to demolish any other houses this day but attempted to leave. They were showered with stones and returned fire with live ammunition, rubber bullets and a machine gun. I had an alarming moment when I looked through a window space to take a picture and realized a soldier was shooting at me. Needless to say I ducked quickly. One of the journalist’s cars got stuck on the road preventing the diggers from leaving. They had great difficulty in moving it.
Two Palestinians were injured and taken away in ambulances. One was hit twice with rubber bullets, once in the forehead, which was bleeding profusely and also in the leg. The other collapsed from shock.
Rabbis for Human Rights have lawyers working to appeal these demolition orders but in this first case they were not able to appeal fast enough.
