Mohammed Mar'i Saudi Gazette RAMALLAH — A group of some 400 Palestinians from various West Bank cities and their foreign supporters Friday night erected another “tent village” to the northwest of occupied Jerusalem. Kamal Hababeh, head of Beit Iksa village council, said that the activists erected the Al-Karamah village (Dignity) in protest of Israeli settlement construction plans in the area, located between Beit Iksa and Lifta. Hababeh said that “the idea of building this village extension is to protect Palestinian legally owned lands and for it to be the second such village built to protect from growing efforts at transforming Arab Jerusalem.” The official said that the Israeli security forces shut the checkpoint at the entrance to Beit Iksa to prevent additional activists from arriving at the area. He added that the activists will erect more tents in the village, build a mosque, plant olive trees and organize cultural activities in the area. The “tent village” was the second of its kind after the Bab al-Shams village which was erected in E1, the bitterly contested tract between occupied Jerusalem and the settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim, to protest Israeli government decision to build thousands of Jewish homes in the area. Israeli forces dismantled it on Wednesday night. The Palestinian Authority has said that E1 land is needed so the future Palestinian state will be viable and have territorial continuity. It warned that Israeli construction there imperils the two-state solution. Israel fears that this could mark a new form of Palestinian protest against Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank. Earlier last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would not tolerate Palestinian outpost building. “As soon as I was updated on the Palestinian gathering, I ordered its immediate evacuation and it was indeed carried out last night in the best possible manner,” he said of the Bab al-Shams village. Disputes over settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem were the major reason for suspending the direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians since September 2010. The Palestinians insist not to resume any direct or indirect peace talks with Israel before the latter clearly declares a complete cessation of settlement activities in the territories occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem that Palestinians want the capital of their future state. They also demand the release of 123 Palestinians who were arrested before the Oslo Accords in 1993. In a vote of 138 to 9, with 41 abstentions, the 193-member UN General Assembly passed a resolution on November 29 upgrading the status of Palestine from a non-member observer entity to a non- member observer state. Among the opponents were Canada and the United States.
