Palestinians: The House Demolitions and Land-Grabs No One Talks About
by Khaled Abu Toameh • June 16, 2022 at 5:00 am
The raid on the village came after the Hamas-controlled Land Authority in the Gaza Strip ruled that the residents must be evacuated because they had built their homes on "state-owned" lands.
Sources in the Gaza Strip said that there are 28 more villages slated for demolition by Hamas on the pretext that they were illegally built on public lands.
"The Hamas security forces prevented the ambulances from entering the village.... That's why we had to take the injured to hospital in our cars." — Yahya Abu Thariyeh, a resident of Umm al-Nasr, independentarabia.com, June 11, 2022
While Hamas has been trying to present itself as the defender of the Bedouin citizens of Israel, it is targeting the Palestinian Bedouin living under its control in the Gaza Strip by demolishing their homes and confiscating their lands, according to Egyptian author Ali Rajab.
Hamas's ongoing efforts to raze entire villages in the Gaza Strip is seen by many Palestinians as.... part of widespread corruption in Hamas, whose leaders want to seize lands for their personal use.
By turning a blind eye to the atrocities of Hamas, the journalists and human rights organizations are once again engaging in a dangerous double standard. Their obsession with Israel allows Hamas to persist in committing violent crimes against the Palestinians without receiving negative media coverage -- much less being held accountable for pillaging and devastating Palestinian communities.
While the international community and media continue to condemn Israel day in and day out about a host of grievances, including the demolition of houses built without proper permits, no one seems to be interested in the ongoing human rights violations against Palestinians by the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.
The United Nations and many foreign journalists are so obsessed with Israel that they have paid no attention to the latest crime committed by Hamas against residents of the Bedouin village of Umm al-Nasr in the northern Gaza Strip. The village was established nearly 80 years ago, long before Hamas was founded in 1988.
On June 9, hundreds of Hamas security officers raided the village to destroy several houses, as part of the terror group's attempt to evict the residents from the area. Hamas claims that the village was illegally built on "state-owned" land.
