QALQILIYA, Wednesday, October 19, 2022 (WAFA) – The Israeli occupation authorities are set to demolish two agricultural structures in the northern West Bank district of Qalqiliya, according to local sources.

They said that the heavily-armed soldiers forced their way into 'Azzun 'Atma village, southeast of the city, and handed a villager a military order to demolish his agricultural structure.

The soldiers also barged their way into Nabi Ilyas village, east of the city, where they handed a villager a similar demolition notice against his structure.

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.

Soldiers in the oxymoronically named Civil Administration, the name Israel gives to the body administering its military occupation of the West Bank, 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.F.