Bedouins Evicted for Jewish Settlement

Guarded by Israeli riot police, bulldozers knocked down 30 shacks and goat-hair tents in a Bedouin tribe’s encampment, making room for an expanding Jewish settlement. Dozens of troops scuffled with tribal elders, and police officers argued with crying Bedouin women at the camp on the outskirts of Maale Adumim, the largest Jewish settlement in the West Bank. Foreign workers loaded the Bedouins’ belongings, including mattresses and bed frames, onto trucks. Last year, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that the Jahalin Bedouin tribe had settled illegally on the state property and could be evicted to make way for settlement construction. The top Palestinian official in Jerusalem, Faisal Husseini, said the eviction violated the interim Israeli-Palestinian peace accords, which say that neither side should take steps that would prejudice the outcome of negotiations on the final status of disputed lands.