BETHLEHEM,
Thursday, October 28, 2021 (WAFA) – The Israeli occupation authorities today
ordered a halt on the construction of a house in Nahalin town, west Bethlehem, according to local sources.
Deputy
head of Nahalin Municipal Office, Hani Fonoun, told WAFA that Israeli military forces and staff of
the so-called Israeli Civil Administration handed a resident a notice, ordering
him to stop the construction of his 120 square-meter house, east of the town.
He added that
the soldiers seized a concrete pump and a mixer from the construction site.
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
“Civil Administration” is the name Israel gives to the body administering its
military occupation of the West Bank.
Soldiers
in the oxymoronically named Civil Administration determine where Palestinians
may live, where and when they may travel (including to other parts of the
occupied territories like Gaza and East Jerusalem), whether they can build or
expand homes on their own land, whether they own that land at all, whether an
Israeli settler can takeover that land among others.
K.T./ K.F.