To the east of the town of Al-Azariya, i.e. east of the city of
Jerusalem, is the Palestinian community known as Jabal Al-Baba
(Moutain Albaba). It is inhabited by about 400 Palestinian citizens who
were originally displaced during the Nakba in 1948 from the Negev
region in southern Palestine. Over the decades, they built their village
on their new lands. They depended for their lives and livelihood on
animal husbandry and agriculture. Since that date, the community has
become part of the town of Al-Aizariyya, and they have built social,
economic and cultural relations with the town and with Jerusalem,
which is the administrative center of this community and other
communities to the east of Jerusalem. About 45 communities are
similar to the Jabal al-Baba community, and this administrative
relationship with the city of Jerusalem remained until the occupation of
the rest of Palestine in 1967. At that time, the Israeli authorities
annexed the city of Jerusalem and gave its residents an Israeli identity
card that differs from the cards that were given to these communities
as the rest of the residents of the West Bank.

From there began the process of separating these communities,
as well as dozens of other villages that were administratively affiliated
to the city of Jerusalem, and these areas became administratively
considered as belonging to Bethlehem 20 km to the south. With the
start of settlement operations in the areas of Jerusalem and the West
Bank in general, and the expansion of the Jerusalem municipality’s
borders, what was known as the Greater Jerusalem Project, an
organized and systematic policy of displacement by the occupation
authorities began for most of the communities located to the east of
the city of Jerusalem. Perhaps the largest settlement project in the area
is the settlement of Maale Adumim, which is close to these
communities. This settlement was established in the seventies of the
last century on the ruins of the village of Jahalin, whose residents were
all displaced to the west near Al-Aizariyya.
With the increase in settlement expansion and the construction of
other settlements and the construction of the infrastructure for these
settlement projects, including streets, electricity and water networks,
gardens, forests, playgrounds, and places of entertainment for settlers,
pressure has increased on these communities to displace them through
the policy of home demolitions and restrictions on movement and
preventing residents from using agricultural lands after confiscating
them for the benefit of the settlements.
Jabal al-Baba was directly exposed to this policy when the
residents of the community were handed orders for mass deportation
and orders to demolish their homes in 2017. At that time, the residents
of the community submitted objections to these orders to the Israeli
judiciary. But since that time many homes and the village mosque have
been demolished, and the only road leading to it has been destroyed.



This forced the residents to walk a distance of 500 meters to reach their
homes or to go anywhere else.
In light of these Israeli measures, the popular resistance
movements, along with many international solidarity groups and some
Jewish forces and individuals in support of peace, began to confront
these Israeli policies through demonstrations, media campaigns, and
presence on the site to counter the demolition campaigns and
incursions carried out from time to time by the Israeli occupation
forces.
The process of displacing this community and it seems that with
all the Israeli political indicators, the policy of demolishing homes and
the restrictions that are constantly imposed on the residents of the
community, the process of displacement is close. Especially since a
mass expulsion took place twenty years ago to the village of Jahalin
near Jabal al-Baba, if it happened, we would be facing a second
displacement of these residents. This will create a problem of
overcrowding in the nearby town of Al-Aizariyya and many life and
humanitarian problems in the area east of Jerusalem. It will also open a
wider field for the expansion of settlements and the construction of
new settlements within the framework of the Greater Jerusalem
project, which is implemented by the Israeli authorities by imposing it
as a fact on the ground.
Citizen Ghassan Jahalin from the village said, "Our lives have
become fraught with dangers and fear of a new displacement, and we
are now in the jaws of the apartheid wall around Jerusalem which
borders our village and the nearby settlements especially the
settlement of Ma'ale Adumim. It is the second displacement for us after

our first displacement from our land in the Negev region." Southern
Palestine in 1948. The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights -
B'Tselem - confirmed, in its commentary on what is happening to the
Jabal al-Baba gathering, "The occupying state is completely deporting
Palestinian communities through the bogus procedures that they call
legal procedures, which are in fact fictitious."
Everything that Israel does by deporting and ordering the
demolition of dozens of communities in the area and Jabal al-Baba is
one of them east of Jerusalem, is a violation of international law. It is
also a violation of dozens of resolutions issued by the Security Council
and the General Assembly of the United Nations, all of which it
considers illegitimate and void. As the occupying power is prohibited
from making any fundamental changes in the occupied territories, and
East Jerusalem, according to international law, is occupied territory as
is the rest of the West Bank after the 1967 war.
Ahmad Jaradat – Alternative Information Center- Palestine