NABLUS, Wednesday, October 14, 2020 (WAFA) – Israeli settlers Wednesday morning started the groundwork for the construction of a settler-only road on Palestinian-owned land to the southwest of the occupied West Bank city of Nablus.

Hafez Saleh, a villager of Asira al-Qibliya town, told WAFA that a group of armed settlers escorted a bulldozer to his plot of land in the eastern section of the town, where they heavy machinery proceeded to level his land for the construction of a road that would connect colonial settlements with one another.

He noted that he, with the help of other villagers, was able to stop the bulldozer from proceeding with the land leveling.

The town is bordered by Yitzhar colonial settlement, notorious for its hardcore Jewish settlers.

Israel denies planning permits for Palestinians to build on their own land, extend existing houses to accommodate natural growth, and to build roads, particularly in Jerusalem and Area C, while it much more easily gives over 700,000 Jewish Israeli settlers there building permits and provides them with roads, electricity, water and sewage systems that remain inaccessible to many neighboring Palestinians.

Israeli severely restricts Palestinians’ freedom of movement through a complex combination of approximately 100 fixed checkpoints, flying checkpoints, settler-only roads and various other physical obstructions.

Such Israeli measures, taken under the guise of security, are intended to entrench Israel’s 53-year-old military occupation of the West Bank and its settler colonial project which it enforces with routine and frequently deadly violence against Palestinians.

K.T./ K.F.