HEBRON, Friday, March 24, 2023 (WAFA) – Israeli occupation authorities predawn Friday delivered a demolition notice against seven graves in al-Burj village, southwest of Hebron, according to local sources.

They said that Israeli forces barged their way into the village cemetery and posted an order to demolish seven tombs of members of the Talahmeh and Faqih families, purportedly for being built in Area C.

The imminent demolition of the graves under construction in the cemetery, which sits on a plot of land that belongs to the Ministry of Waqf and Religious Affairs, caused intense panic and fear among the villagers about possible future desecration of their cemetery.

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.