Israeli bulldozers Monday demolished several Palestinian structures in Izbit Shufa neighborhood, southeast of Tulkarm city, according to witnesses and owners.

Amer Hamed, a shack owner, told WAFA that Israeli forces escorted a bulldozer into the neighborhood, where the heavy machinery tore down a shack, the wall surrounding his brother’s parking lot besides to another wall surrounding the land plot of another resident.

He pointed out that they received a military order to evict the area slated for demolition within 96 hours despite the fact that they have legal documents attesting to their ownership of their properties.

Israel demolishes Palestinian houses and structures almost on a daily basis as a means to achieve “demographic control” of the occupied territories.

Israel denies planning permits for Palestinians to build on their own land or to extend existing houses to accommodate natural growth, particularly in Jerusalem and Area C, which constitutes 60 percent of the occupied West Bank and falls under full Israeli military rule, forcing residents to build without obtaining rarely-granted permits to provide shelters for their families.

In contrast, Israel argues that building within existing colonial settlements is necessary to accommodate the “natural growth” of settlers. Therefore, it much more easily gives the estimated 550,000 Jewish Israeli settlers there building permits and provides them with roads, electricity, water and sewage systems that remain inaccessible to many neighboring Palestinians.

 

Source: Wafa Agency