HEBRON, Thursday, July 25, 2019 (WAFA) – Israeli bulldozers today razed Palestinian farmlands in al-Baqaa, located to the east of the southern West Bank city of Hebron.

Aref Jaber, a member of the Human Rights Defenders Group in Hebron, said that an Israeli military force escorted bulldozers to al-Baqaa, where the bulldozers razed 16 dunums of farmlands planted with tomato seedlings purportedly to uncover the pipeline supplying water to the neighboring illegal settlements of Qiryat Arbaa‘ and Kharsine.

Jaber identified the landowners as Badran Jaber, Adel Jaber and Shadi Jaber.

Israeli forces have frequently ordered a halt on the construction and renovation of Palestinian houses and demolished structures in the area as a means to forcefully displace Palestinians and seize their land for settlement construction.

Al-Baqaa is located in Area C of the West Bank, which is under full Israeli military and civil control.

Israeli refuses to permit virtually any Palestinian construction in 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 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.

K.F.