HEBRON, Wednesday, February 16, 2022 (WAFA) –Israeli forces today ordered a stop of the construction of a cemetery in the town of Idna, west of Hebron, according to local sources.

Director of Idhna’s Municipality Public Relations Department, Abdul-Rahman al-Tmiziy, told WAFA Israeli forces delivered a notice ordering a halt on the construction of a cemetery belonging to the Awwad family in Khirbet al-Ras area, close to the section of Israel’s apartheid wall.

He pointed out that the demolitions of Palestinian structures are part of a larger Israeli policy aimed at expelling Palestinians from their lands near the section of Israel’s apartheid wall as a prelude to seize them for colonial settlement construction.

Based on data provided by the Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem (2009 statistics), Idhna occupies approximately 20,000 dunums, including only 3,050 classified as built-up area, while the majority is classified as Area C.

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 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.F.