Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered Thursday to drive Bedouin Palestinian communities out of their tents on Highway 1 in the vicinity of Occupied Jerusalem heading towards the Dead Sea.
According to a Thursday report by Yedioth Ahoronot Netanyahu pushed for dismantling what he called “illegal outposts” in reference to the tents inhabited by Palestinian Bedouins on Jerusalem’s outskirts and for relocating the residents in Jericho and Abu Dis.
In a meeting between the prime minister the so-called Jerusalem Perimeter Forum and the Binyamin Regional Council Netanyahu ordered the removal of the Bedouin encampments pitched along Highway 1 leading from Occupied Jerusalem down to the Dead Sea.
Observers have often raised alarm bells over Israeli intents to force Bedouin communities out of the area in favor of illegal settlement projects and as part of a larger scheme of ethnic cleansing.
The move also makes part of the E1 settlement scheme aiming to dismember Palestinian communities across and around Occupied Jerusalem.
Under international law Palestinian Bedouins living in Jerusalem’s outer edges are occupied communities and have thus the right to live in their motherland.