Israeli Law and Demolishing Towns

Israel's Supreme Court has rejected appeals against the demolition of a Bedouin village in the occupied West Bank. Judges upheld an order to raze Khan al-Ahmar, where about 180 people live between two Jewish settlements. Israel's government says the structures were built illegally. Khan al-Ahmar, which is 8km (5 miles) east of Jerusalem, was established in the early 1950s by members of a semi-nomadic tribe the UN says was displaced from the Negev desert in southern Israel. Israel did not recognise Khan al-Ahmar as a residential area after it occupied the West Bank during the 1967 war, and refused to connect the community to utilities like water and electricity.

The United Nations has called on Israel to allow the Bedouin to remain on the land, saying such demolitions are against international law. Any destruction of property by the occupying power is prohibited, except when rendered absolutely necessary by military operations, the UN says. The extensive demolition of property is a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention and may amount to a war crime, it adds. Other than for the security of the population or imperative military reasons, international humanitarian law also prohibits the transfer of the population of an occupied territory without the genuinely and fully informed consent of the affected people, according to the UN. Khan al-Ahmar is one of 18 Bedouin communities the UN considers being at risk of forcible transfer because they are located in or next to an area near East Jerusalem slated by Israel for Jewish settlement construction.

However, Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman congratulated the court on Wednesday's ruling upholding the demolition order."Nobody is above the law, nobody will keep us from acting on our sovereignty and responsibility as a state." 

Needless to say, he does expect Israeli law to apply to Jewish settlers in the Occupied Territories when they expand their settlements. He has no intention of demolishing those.

Meanwhile, the newly-elected government of Paraguay has reversed the previous government's decision to shift its embassy to Jerusalem and intends to return it to Tel Aviv, much to Netanyahu's annoyance and now Israel will close the Israeli embassy in Paraguay in retaliation.

Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem has never been recognised internationally, and according to the 1993 Israel-Palestinian peace accords, the final status of Jerusalem is meant to be discussed in the latter stages of peace talks. Since 1967, Israel has built a dozen settlements, home to about 200,000 Jews, in East Jerusalem. These are considered illegal under international law