RAMALLAH, Sept. 5 (Xinhua) -- The Palestinians condemned on Wednesday the Israeli Supreme Court's decision to demolish the Bedouin Village of al-Khan al-Ahmar in east of Jerusalem.
The Israeli court rejected the appeal of the village residents to stop their deportation and demolition of their facilities, said Walid Assaf, head of the Palestinian Authority Wall and Settlements Colonization Resistance Committee.
He said that the court has finally decided to proceed with the demolition within a week, adding that an alert was announced in the village.
"The Court's decision affirms the crime of forced displacement, ethnic cleansing and mass destruction practiced by Israel against Palestinian communities and isolating them in cantons," said Assaf.
Adnan Husseini, in charge of Jerusalem affairs in Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), told Xinhua that "the decision of the Israeli court is a proof that the Israeli judiciary is one of the tools of the occupation."
The decision will not change the Palestinian position to reject the plan of demolishing the village of Al-Khan Al-Ahmar and Palestinians are determined to confront it by all available means, the PLO official stressed.
He warned that the plan to demolish the village falls within the framework of a settlement plan to strangle the city of Jerusalem and isolate it from the West Bank.
Al-Khan Al-Ahmar is a Bedouin area near the Ma'aleh Adumim and Kfar Adumim settlements, east of Jerusalem, whose residents live in tents and tin shacks.
Approximately 200 Palestinian Bedouins live in this gathering, 53 percent of whom are children and 95 percent are Palestinian refugees registered within the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
On May, the Israeli Supreme Court decided to demolish the village, which has a school serving 170 pupils in the area.
The village is surrounded by a number of Israeli settlements. It is part of the land that the Israeli authorities are targeting for the implementation of its "E1" settlement project, which is to undermine prospects for a two-state solution.
Palestinian government spokesperson Yousef al-Mahmoud said that the court's verdict "is an aggression on the principles of human rights and the abolition of agreements between human beings to preserve their rights to their property, homes and lives."
President Abbas Fatah Party spokesman Osama al-Qawasmeh called on the Palestinian people "to go to the village and defend it from the barbaric decision to demolish the village and deport its people."
In Gaza, Islamic Hamas movement said in a press statement that the Israeli court's decision is "a crime," adding that "The courts are tools that implement the policy of the Israeli authorities."
Hamas held Israel responsible for the consequences "of the new crime," calling on the Palestinian people "to revolt in the face of the occupier and resist it to stop its crimes and topple its settlement schemes."
The Palestinians accuse Israel of launching an attack on the Bedouin communities adjacent to the eastern part of Jerusalem and practicing "ethnic cleansing" in favor of settlement construction.
Israel usually justifies its demolitions because of construction without a permit, but Palestinian and international human rights organizations say Israel rarely issues building permits.
