Israel Orders Demolition of Palestinian House in Bethlehem

Israel Orders Demolition of Palestinian House in Bethlehem

A Palestinian man sees the demolition of a home at the order of the Israeli army in the West Bank. (Wisam Hashlamoun/Apa photo)

The Israeli occupation forces on Tuesday ordered the demolition of a Palestinian house under construction in Ghazara town, east of the West Bank city of Bethlehem.

According to local sources, Israeli soldiers gave Palestinian citizen Ahmad Mousa Dhuweib a notification to tear down his one-storey house in the village purportedly for being built without a license.

Israel’s house demolitions are routine in the occupied West Bank and make part of its attempts to reinforce its 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 over 700,000 Jewish Israeli settlers there building permits and provides them with roads, electricity, water and sewage systems that remain inaccessible to many neighboring Palestinians.

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