Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is holding together his fragile parliamentary coalition by backing the demands of the aggressive settlers encroaching on Palestinian lands, with one dramatic case the plan to demolish the Palestinian village of Susiya, writes Alon Ben-Meir.

By Alon Ben-Meir

The pending order to demolish the small Palestinian village of Susiya in the southern Judean Mountains in the occupied West Bank represents a most blatant violation of human rights. The order calls for the forcible removal of several hundred Palestinians who have been living on their land from the time of the Ottoman Empire and still have the ownership deeds to prove their claim.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who never misses an opportunity to remind the world that Israel is a democracy guided by moral principles, seems to care less about displacing Palestinian women and children for the fourth time. His excuse is that this dusty village, established in 1830, is the site of archeological remains both of a Fifth Century synagogue and a Tenth Century mosque and it must be preserved.

The real reason is that Netanyahu is leading a coalition government which is committed to preventing the Palestinians from building anywhere in Area C, which represents 61 percent of the West Bank, and is openly seeking its outright annexation.

This policy is repeatedly reinforced by the government’s refusal to grant building permits to Susiya residents, when at the same time it is providing all the funding for facilities and security to a religious communal Israeli settlement established in 1986 with the same name only a short distance south of Palestinian Susiya.

It is hard to express how outrageous the behavior of Netanyahu’s government is when only hours after Israel’s High Court of Justice ordered the demolition of two illegally-built structures in the West Bank settlement of Beit El, Netanyahu authorized the immediate construction of 300…