HEBRON, Wednesday, August 25, 2021 (WAFA) - Israeli forces today razed a large tract of agriculture land in Birin village, south of the southern West Bank city of Hebron, according to a local activist.

Head of Birin Village Council, Farid Burqan, told WAFA that Israeli military bulldozers leveled 10 donums of agriculture land planted with 400 grape and olive saplings as well as summer crops.

They also tore down retaining walls and sabotaged barbed wire belonging to Salem al-Rajabi under the flimsy pretext that his plot of land is located in Area C, which accounts for 60 percent of the total West Bank area.

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. 

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.

K.F.