What kind of Independence is this?

Days after Israel celebrated its 75th independence day, a demonstration of Israel's non-independence played out behind the closed doors of Israel's supreme court.

It concerned a tiny Bedouin settlement of ramshackle dwellings illegally-built on the outskirts of Jerusalem within Area C; a designation of full Israeli control under the Oslo Accords.

In a bizarre scenario, Israel’s supreme court ruled these to be illegal dwellings and ordered them to be demolished. 15 years after that ruling, the eyesore, called Khan Al-Ahmar remains standing.

The court wants it demolished. The government wants it demolished. And I daresay even its 35 families would like to take up the Israeli government’s offer to relocate them to brand new housing units a stone’s throw away, which are connected to mains water, sewerage and electricity – all free of charge.

What is standing in the way of this ideal solution? It is foreign-funded NGOs like B’tselem who have turned Khan Al Ahmar into an international cause célèbre which has left successive Israeli governments fearful of implementing the supreme court’s ruling.

You only have to look at this UK Government page on Khan Al Amar to see the furore that has been stirred up, as if this is a major priority for the UK or Finland or any other foreign government. Of course it’s not. If any of the foreign service mandarins of protesting countries cared a fig for Palestinian Arabs, they would want them to be properly housed like human beings. Instead, their visceral hatred of the Jewish state and nausea over its very existence means that the families of Khan Al Ahmar are to be treated as pawns just as they are treated by the corrupt Palestinian leadership which soaks up foreign aid for its own enrichment (Google: Hamas Billionaires).

I have said this many times before. Israel may celebrate its independence each year with parades, fireworks and all manner of pomp. But it will not be truly independent until it acts like a sovereign state. If the Netanyahu government does not finally lance this abscess, the infection will spread to other parts of Area C and we may then be forced to amputate parts of it. Which is exactly what the PLO and its foreign funded NGOs seek as their goal: the dismemberment of the Jewish state.