Ben Carden. All rights reserved.Since the beginning of 2016, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has sent out 76 triggers alerting relevant NGOs to demolitions by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) and the Israeli Civil Administration (ICA). This number seems to announce an ominous future as it already counts for more than one third of the 205 total demolitions in the entire year of 2015.
The entire population of Area C in the West Bank is around 300,000, accounting for 6% of the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza. Ever since the “clinical death” of the Oslo agreement in 1999 and the emergence of the second intifada in 2000, the Israeli government has retained its control over Area C, as determined by this accord at the end of last century.
The Civil Administration, a branch of the umbrella organisation Coordination of the Governmental Activities in the Territories (COGAT), manages and carries out bureaucratic functions in the territories Israel currently controls. One of its recent priorities has been to establish full control over the Jordan Valley, in Area C, a region covering 28.5% of the West Bank. The Jordan Valley’s rich agricultural land, temperate climate and the abundance of water supplies offer enormous agricultural and economic benefits to the holder of that land. In order to establish its dominance in this area, the Israeli government has started significantly increasing demolitions of Bedouin structures.
