Mervat Sadiq - Al Khan Red

For the fourth month in a row, Ahmed Ibrahim Abu Dahuk sits in his residence in the village of Al-Khan Al-Ahmar, east of occupied Jerusalem, after the Israeli occupation stopped his entry into the industrial zone adjacent to the Bedouin community.

Abu Dahuk has been working for years in a warehouse in an industrial zone a few minutes from his village, which the occupation has decided to demolish and deport its 200-strong population to implement its plans to link major Israeli settlements around Jerusalem and isolate the city from its geographical extension with the West Bank.

On 4 July, large Israeli occupation forces attacked the village with the intention of demolishing and expelling its residents. Abu Dahuk was among the villagers who resisted the bulldozers and prevented their progress, where he was beaten and injured.

Abu Dahuk was arrested with six young Al-Khan Al-Ahmar for a week. In their first moments of detention, Israeli soldiers threatened to lose their work forever. After their release, their work permits were suspended.

This was reflected negatively on the life of the man who supports his family of seven. He was forced to take his eldest son Nasr out of his school in the tenth grade to join the labor market in order to secure the livelihood of his brothers.

In the past few years, Israeli occupying forces have prevented workers from entering the industrial zones and denied permits for security reasons, according to Ahmed Abu Dahuk.

Animal husbandry in the village is no longer a source of livelihood as it was previously (the island)

Unemployment rate
According to the village council of the Red Khan, the policy of economic tightening has intensified recently, but began since 2009 when the Israeli threat began to demolish the village and the people began to establish their presence by building a school for their children.

In this context, the group's activist Faisal Abu Dahuk said that the occupation is exerting pressure on them throughout their lives to force them to leave voluntarily in search of a source of livelihood for them and their livestock.

The occupation has given the village to evacuate voluntarily until the beginning of October, and since the beginning of the month, the Israeli occupation forces carried out daily incursions to measure the roads and prepare for the process of forced evictions. But parents say they have no choice but to stand up and say, "We will not die of hunger, we will stay here."

The head of the village council of the Red Khan Eid Abu Dahuk estimated the unemployment rate among his workers by more than 70%. To make matters worse, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) began to stop most of its aid to the Red Khan and Bedouin communities in Jerusalem and the West Bank, mainly food aid, which was distributed every three months.

Economic pressure
The occupation is continuing in its policy against the residents of the area, where the granting of permits to the children of the Red Khan and Jahalin Bedouins generally faces complex security procedures and requires additional security approval from settlement and industrial security officials in the suburbs of Jerusalem who refuse to grant them to the majority of the Bedouin communities simply because they live in the area.

The President of the Council said that the economic pressure and the absence of aid were the most prominent policies pursued by Israel to push the Bedouin migration to the areas of Eizariya and Hizma to the Nablus area to the north.

While animal husbandry was one of the main sources of livelihood for the Red Khan, the occupation closed the grazing areas within the village, which is threatened with demolition completely under the pretext that it is located next to military zones, settlements or nature reserves, and denied access to natural water sources.

Ahmed Abu Dahuk The Israeli occupation suspended his work permit to force him to leave the Red Khan (Al-Jazeera)

Temptations in millions
Abu Dahuk pointed out that the livestock in the village is no longer a source of livelihood as it was in the past, where the population depends on them in simple numbers to meet their food needs only. He also pointed out that a large number of workers who were harvesting dates in the Jericho area stopped for fear of carrying out the demolition and displacement of their families in their absence.

In exchange for the economic siege imposed on the village residents, the President of the Council revealed that the workers and residents of the pool offered them huge Israeli financial temptations to leave their village voluntarily.

Abu Duhok himself offered him the so-called Israeli Civil Administration a large sum of money in return for leaving the group and convince his family to leave.

He explained that these temptations offered by the Israeli political high levels "and the Office of the Minister of Defense Avigdor Lieberman personally."

Young men who were arrested at the start of the events of the Red Khan - and their work permits - spoke of receiving huge Israeli financial offers to leave their village, but they refused.