Alistair Burt MP

Minister of State for the Middle East

Foreign and Commonwealth Office

11th May 2018

Dear Alistair,

I am writing to share my concern about last week’s news that the Israeli High Court has ordered the demolition of Khan Al-Ahmar in E-1 to expand Ma’ale Adumim. This will allow for further forced displacement of the Jahalin Bedouin communities. Moreover, the demolitions form part of Israel's E1 plan, which will cut off Palestinians living in East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank. In the High Court Judge Noam Sohlberg ruled that the only question the Court had to answer was whether the structures were built with building permits or not, and since they were built without permits, the State was allowed to demolish them at any time commencing on Friday 1^st June, 2018.

This overlooks the following facts:

• the Israeli authorities always refuse building permits to Bedouin and indeed to all Palestinians in Area C;
• the Israeli assumption of planning powers in Area C was a part of the Oslo accords that lapsed in 1999;
• the settlers who want to take over the land of Khan al Ahmar are themselves illegal; and
• most legal experts say that the occupation of the West Bank that started in 1967 is now illegal;
• the lawyer in this case says it should be referred to the International Court of Justice at The Hague

I have signed EDM 1169, which states that the demolition of the buildings in the village of Khan Al-Ahmar would be a flagrant disregard by Israel of both the will of the international community and the international legal order. The motion goes on to highlight the coercive environment of threatened demolition, illegal settlement expansion and forcible displacement that are a daily reality faced by communities in the occupied Palestinian territories. I know that you have spoken out before about housing demolitions and, as part of the UK Government’s commitments as a signatory of the Fourth Geneva Convention, I trust you will  exert meaningful and decisive political, diplomatic and economic pressure on the Israeli authorities to halt the demolitions programme as a whole and, in particular, to abandon attempts to demolish the school and other buildings in Khan al-Ahmar.

Yours sincerely,