In the 1980s, when I was a soldier doing regular army service, I was ordered to the Palestinian village of al-Jiftlick in the Jordan Valley. The village residents — so we were told — had received an order to demolish it, and we were to supervise and ensure that it was carried out. We expected the residents to refuse to carry out the order, and that we would be forced to clash with them. But when we reached the place, we watched them carrying out the demolition order on the village without need for our intervention and without connection to us. We were amazed at the way the residents reconciled themselves to the decision. The village, which had existed for hundreds of years, was re-established and destroyed over and over several times, as part of an intentional Israeli policy that we could not understand at the time.

I was reminded of al-Jiftlick about two weeks ago [Sept. 20] when I received a widely circulated email from the UN emissary to the area, who denounced the violence with which the diplomats were treated — diplomats who went to the Khirbet al-Makhoul village bringing assistance. Despite my close familiarity with the Occupied Territories, I had never heard of the village that was demolished the day before on the order of the High Court. The Israeli media did not report on the deed. It only rose to the headlines due to the confrontation that took place on the site.

Marion Fesneau-Castaing, the female French diplomat who slapped the IDF soldier in his face — an unacceptable act — succeeded in directing Israeli and world attention to the fact that the authorities demolished a village housing human beings including children, women and the elderly. Though that was, evidently, deemed unworthy of being reported — the slap received by the IDF soldier or the shove visited on the diplomat brought them much attention.

Palestinian Bedouins have been living in the Khirbet al-Makhoul village even before 1967, but this did not help them when the army came to evacuate them from their village. That they are Palestinians, like the rest of the desert residents in the occupied territories, harms them twice: They are weaker than the Bedouins classified as Israeli citizens, but because they are Bedouins, the Palestinians also take no interest in them.