Israel postponed on Sunday plans to demolish the Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar, announced Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office.
"The intention is to give a chance to the negotiations and the offers we received from different bodies, including in recent days," a statement from his office said about the occupied West Bank village.
Israeli authorities say the small village, located east of Jerusalem along a road leading to the Dead Sea, was built illegally, and had given resident until the beginning of October to evict themselves and demolish the structures.
The fate of Khan al-Ahmar has drawn international concern, with European countries calling on Israel not to move ahead with plans to demolish it.
On Wednesday, the International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor warned that Israel's planned "evacuation by force" of the village could constitute a war crime.
The residents have refused to leave on their own, and Israel had been making the preparations to expel the residents and demolish the village.
The eviction decision followed years of legal battles and after negotiation attempts to agree on an alternative site for relocation failed.
The expulsion plan had included relocation to an area about 12 km (seven miles) away next to a landfill.
But an official in Netanyahu’s office, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said an alternative relocation plan was being looked at, in coordination with the Palestinian Authority.
“The goal is to fully exhaust negotiations and (examine) proposed plans submitted by various agents, including (those received) in the past few days,” the official said.
Israel, which has long sought to clear the Arab nomads from tracts of land between the settlements of Maale Adumim and Kfar Adumim, said Khan al-Ahmar was built without the required permits. Palestinians say such documents are impossible to obtain.
The Palestinians say razing the village’s tents and tin shacks is part of an Israeli plan to create an arc of Jewish settlements that would effectively cut off East Jerusalem from the West Bank, areas captured by Israel in a 1967 war.
Most countries consider settlements built by Israel on land it captured in 1967 as illegal and say they reduce and fragment the territory Palestinians seek for a viable state. Israel disputes this.
This article has been adapted from its original source.
