QALQILYA, Tuesday, January 18, 2022 (WAFA) – Israeli forces today tore down an agricultural room in the village of Nabi Elias, east of the occupied West Bank city of Qalqilya, according to sources.

Mohammad Abu al-Sheikh, an anti-colonial-settlement activist, said that the Israeli forces escorted a bulldozer to the villagers’ lands, where the heavy machinery razed an agricultural room belonging to Rizq Abu Sa'ad.

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 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.

K.T./ K.F.