The Israeli occupation authorities on Monday tore down a Palestinian-owned house and other structures in Birin village, south of AlKhalil, according to a local activist.

Fouad al-Amour, a local activist, said in a statement quoted by WAFA news agency that Israeli forces broke into the village as an army bulldozer proceeded to demolish a 70-square-meter house belonging to a local resident.

He added that the bulldozer also demolished stone terraces and a pond used to collect rainwater for agricultural purposes in the same area.

Amour warned that the demolitions in this area are intended to dislocate the local population in order to make way for settlement construction.

According to the Land Research Center, Israel has frequently issued military stop-construction and demolition orders against various residential and agricultural structures and dismantled barns in the locality, citing the lack of rarely-issued construction permits as a pretext.

In December 2017, Israel delivered stop-construction orders to the locality’s sole clinic and building intended to serve as a primary school for the community’s 60 children.

In June 2019, as shown in a PLO’s Negotiations Affairs Department’s report, Israel seized 4,800 dunams of land from several localities, including Birin, for the expansion of Bani Haiver.

Located to the southwest of Bani Na‘im, Birin has a population of 160 and is flanked by Bani Haiver colonial settlement from the east and the settler-only bypass Road No. 60 from the west. Its residents were originally expelled from Naqab in southern Israel and now depend on agriculture and livestock as their main source of livelihood.