HEBRON, Thursday, November 3, 2022 (WAFA) – Israeli forces today tore down dwellings and plugged water wells in Arab al-Freihat area, south of Ad-Dhahiriya city in the southern West Bank district of Hebron, according to a local source.

Municipal Council member of Ar-Ramadin, a village southwest of Hebron, said that Israeli forces escorted bulldozers to the area, where the heavy machineries knocked down a dwelling belonging to the Abu Iram family in addition to a cement-and-tin-sheet room and retaining walls belonging to the Abu Laban family.

The army bulldozers plugged two water wells belonging to the families as the soldiers seized the equipment of a blacksmith workshop belonging to another family.

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.