https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12416/palestinian-illegal-building
The real story is the land. Building on it was key to taking possession of an otherwise unattainable piece of territory, and making this possession appear irreversible.
The basis of “The Fayyad Plan” (Official title: “Palestine: Ending the Occupation, Establishing the State”) was, and remains, the creation of a de facto state — without the need for negotiation with Israel — through facts on the ground in areas under full Israeli administrative and security administration.
Jahalin West would offer services that these Bedouin have never had — services the Palestinian Authority has never offered them: running water, electricity, permanent homes they themselves are free to design, health clinics, public transportation, schools, access to employment, and more.
What the Palestinian Authority, the European Union, Israel’s High Court of Justice, three Israeli towns, and the Jahalin tribe have in common is the Bedouin settlement of Khan al-Akhmar.
The battle for this Arab settlement has been waged in the international media and the Israeli Supreme Court for more than a decade, and its story is a microcosm of the Arab-Israel conflict, complete with alternative narratives, shifting alliances, unclear lines of responsibility and murky vested interests.
The first problem is that Khan al Akhmar is located in an area, unpoetically named Area C, where, according to the United Nations, “Israel retains near exclusive control, including over law enforcement, planning and construction.”
This small cluster of Bedouin homes is actually sitting on land in an Israeli township, Kfar Adumim, at a strategic crossroads between Jerusalem, the Dead Sea, and the outlying Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem, making it crucial both to the Israelis and the Palestinians.
Until fairly recently, the residents of the Arab settlement — a branch of the Jahalin tribe of Bedouin — had lived in southern Israel. At some point in the 1970s, a feud broke out between different branches of the tribe, and the Jahalin fled northward, and arrived in the Maaleh Adumim region in the late 1970s, where they have remained ever since.