HEBRON, Tuesday, July 28, 2020 (WAFA) – Israeli forces today issued military demolition orders against two houses and  a stop-construction order against two barns in the village of Birin, to the east of the occupied West Bank city of Hebron.

WAFA correspondent confirmed that Israeli forces handed Fayez al-Azazma a demolition order against his 120-meter-square house and gave Isma‘eel Barqan another order against his 150-meter-quare house.

Soldiers also issued a military order to halt the construction of two livestock barns; a 200-meter-square barn belonging to Emran Barqan and a 400-meter-square another belonging to Yousef al-Ajlouny.

The villagers voiced their concerns that the planned demolitions are part of the wider Israeli measures designed to displace them and grab their land to make room for the expansion of the nearby illegal colonial settlement of Bani Haiver.

They called on local and international organizations to help revoke Israel's demolition and displacement decisions and to protect them against settler violence.

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 showed 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.

K.T./ K.F.