Occupation forces returned to Al Jiftlik village yet again, on 24th of January 2018, to carry out more demolitions.

They destroyed a small house on the land belonging to Ehab Ahmad Baragate for generations, which had been under construction since July 2017 and had not even been finished. Ehab Ahmad had been living at his brother’s house few meters from his land and was not there to witness the demolition of the house he had been building for the last 6 months. He was travelling to Jordan to visit his wife and his children (the eldest being 18 years old), who he rarely gets the opportunity to see. Even though his children have got the Palestinian nationality, his wife hasn’t, so she is prevented from entering Palestine. Ehab applied to the occupation forces for permission for his wife to join him in 1997 (more than 20 years). His plan was to finish building the house for them to be able to live there when they could finally be reunited as a family.

He received an order of demolition from the Israeli military occupation forces about a month and an half ago. He tried to get in contact with a lawyer to avoid this situation but nothing could been done.

So the IOF arrived early on Wednesday morning, around 7am, with two Volvo bulldozers, military jeeps and twenty to thirty soldiers. After closing the whole area and preventing anybody from entering the property, they started to process the demolition. Ehab Ahmad got a call from his nephew, who was present with four other family members, watching but unable to do anything.

Jordan Valley Solidarity arrived on site at 10am to offer support to the family. Some others organisations were present such as the TV channel MAN, the United Nation Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), and B’Tselem, the Israeli center for human rights.

On the same morning, in the same village, four goat shelters were also demolished on the farming land of Atia family, comprising 18 people.