NABLUS, Wednesday, December 19, 2018 (WAFA) – Israeli settlers Wednesday morning razed Palestinian lands belonging to Asira al-Qibliya town, south of Nablus, for settlement expansion, said a local activist.

Ghassan Daghlas, an anti-settlement activist in the northern West Bank, told WAFA that Israeli bulldozers belonging to settlers from Yitzhar settlement razed lands in Lot 1, known as al-Kharroub, to expand their settlement.

Yitzhar is an illegal settlement inhabited by hardcore fanatic Jews, south of Nablus.

This came almost a week after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened a series of collective punishment measures following a spate of deadly attacks that left four Palestinians and three Israeli soldiers dead.

Such measures include demolition of homes belonging to the families of suspected Palestinian assailants and accelerated settlement construction.

Such Israeli measures, taken under the guise of security, are intended to entrench Israel’s 51-year-old military occupation of the West Bank and its settler colonial project which it enforces with routine and frequently deadly violence against Palestinians.

Between 500,000 and 600,000 Israelis live in Jewish-only settlements across occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank in violation of international law.

All settlements across the West Bank are illegal under international law, particularly article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which establishes that the occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.

K.T./ K.F.