HEBRON, Thursday, February 13, 2020 (WAFA) - Israeli forces today demolished a residential structure in Jabal Jawhar neighborhood, located to the east of the occupied West bank city of Hebron.

Local sources confirmed that Israeli forces escorted a bulldozer to Jabal Jawhar, adjacent to the illegal colonial settlement of Kiryat Arba, where the heavy machine tore down the structure, displacing a family of five members.

The structure owner was identified as Belal al-Rajabi.

Israel demolishes Palestinian houses and structures almost on a daily basis as a means to achieve “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 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.

The city of Hebron, which houses the Ibrahimi Mosque, is home to roughly 160,000 Palestinian Muslims and about 800 Israeli settlers who live in compounds heavily guarded by Israeli troops.

Israel has expelled the only international monitors protecting Hebron’s Palestinians from 800 heavily guarded settlers, one of whom committed the 1994 massacre that triggered their deployment.

K.F.