麻豆APP

22 May 2026

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The Israeli government must immediately cease its measures to forcibly displace the Khan Al Ahmar community in the area known as E1 in the occupied West Bank and stop its settlement expansion plans there.

Situated east of Jerusalem, Khan Al Ahmar is a Bedouin community and home to hundreds of Palestinians. On Tuesday, 19 May, the Israeli Minister of Finance and Additional Minister within the Ministry of Defence, Bezalel Smotrich, directed the Israeli Civil Administration to evict the Khan Al Ahmar community “as soon as possible”. This order puts the community at imminent risk of forcible transfer — a war crime.

Last year, Israeli authorities approved plans for 3,401 settlement units in the E1 area that would connect the Israeli settlement of Maaleh Adumim to occupied East Jerusalem. The planned construction would replace 18 Palestinian communities, including Khan Al Ahmar, with Israeli settlers. It would further disrupt the territorial continuity of the occupied West Bank, consolidate Israeli annexation, and severely impair a viable, contiguous Palestinian state.

Statements by Israeli officials link the settlement project in the E1 area to the thwarting of Palestinian statehood. This includes, in September 2025, the Israeli Prime Minister telling the press during a ceremony related to the E1 settlement project: “There will be no Palestinian state. This place is ours.”

The families of Khan Al Ahmar are mostly refugees, originally displaced from areas inside present-day Israel. For nearly two decades, Israeli authorities have consistently denied the community building permits and then issued orders to demolish their homes on the basis of the absence of such permits. Members of the community have spent years challenging the demolition orders in Israeli courts. Sustained international advocacy efforts have thus far prevented the community’s forcible transfer.

“There is no legal ambiguity about this: Israel’s forcible transfer of Palestinians is unlawful; settlements are unlawful; and Israel must cease all settlement activities, evacuate all settlements, and end its unlawful presence in the Palestinian territory in line with the conclusions of the International Court of Justice,” said Ajith Sunghay, Head of UN Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

“Instead, Israel is engaged in what appears to be relentless ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and an unprecedented expansion of its settlement enterprise. If Israel continues to be allowed to alter facts on the ground with impunity, there will soon be nothing left to salvage.”