Your lunch plans at Beit Jala have been cancelled by the IDF

Well-known Beit Jala restaurant destroyed by Israel, again
Ryan Brownell – The Electronic Intifada – 21 May, 2012

Beit Jala – In the early morning of Thursday, 3 May, representatives from several human rights organizations were scheduled to have breakfast in the popular al-Makhrour restaurant near Bethlehem.

The purpose for the scheduled workshop was to discuss house demolitions and property confiscation by Israeli forces in Area C, a zone comprising 60 percent of the West Bank that is under full Israeli control.

As people arrived for the meeting, though, the first thing they saw was a bulldozer leaving the site, alongside some Israeli officials. The restaurant — which is located beside the village of Beit Jala — had been demolished two hours earlier.

“It was bizarre,” said Mohammad Zeidan, director of the Arab Association for Human Rights. “The timing … we couldn’t really believe what we were seeing.”

Just before dawn on that day, Israeli soldiers surrounded and sealed off the area, and proceeded to destroy the restaurant and an adjacent building owned by the Qesieh family. The demolition was carried out under the pretext of a demolition order issued in 2005.

“The restaurant was already gone,” said Odna Copty of the Association for the Rights of the Internally Displaced in Israel. “It is always sad to hear about these things, and to read about them. But when you expect it to be there, and it’s gone, that’s always something different.” …more