Israel said to block EU envoys’ visit to school in threatened Bedouin village

European diplomats try to pay a solidarity visit to a West Bank village under threat of demolition by Israel but police bar them from reaching a school there, the diplomats say.

Diplomats from Belgium, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, and the European Union sought to visit the school in the Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar, which is funded by several European countries, but they were turned back at the village entrance.

Police at the scene say the area had been declared a closed military zone ahead of the planned demolition of the village.

“We were briefed by local leaders but refused access by security forces to the school,” the Irish representative office to the West Bank writes on its official Twitter feed.

“We wanted to show our solidarity with this village which is threatened with destruction, for humanitarian reasons and because it is a major issue of international law,” the Consul General of France in Jerusalem, Pierre Cochard, tells journalists at the scene.

— AFP