NABLUS, Tuesday, August 02, 2022 (WAFA) – Israeli bulldozers today razed two commercial structures and a house in Bizzariya and Sebastia towns, north of Nablus, according to local sources.

Ghassan Daghlas, who monitors colonial settlement activities in the northern West Bank, said that Israeli forces escorted a bulldozer to Bizzariya in the early morning hours, where the heavy machinery tore down a car wash and a rest area, reducing them to rubble.

The demolished structures, located at the village entrance, belong to Rabeh Seif.

Meanwhile, Mayor of Sebastia, Mohammad Azem, told WAFA a unit of soldiers used a bulldozer to raze an inhabited house close to the town entrance, under what he described as “flimsy pretexts” turning it to debris.

He added the 8-member family of Mohammad Abu Su‘ud, who owns the house, have become homeless.

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.F.