BETHLEHEM, September 2, 2025 (WAFA) – Israeli occupation forces on Tuesday demolished a Palestinian-owned house in the Battir town, west of the occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem, according to a local source.
Khalil Muammar, member of the Battir Village Council, said that the occupying forces tore down a villager’s house under construction, which covered an area of 100 square meters, purportedly for being built without a license.
Israel has long demolished Palestinian houses and structures as a means to achieve “demographic control” of the occupied territories.
It has long denied 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.
Since the onset of the Israeli genocidal aggression on Gaza in October 2023, however, the practice has been turbocharged, with Israeli bulldozers tearing down people's homes on a near-daily basis.
Overseen by Bezalel Smotrich, Israel's far-right finance minister, who also wields power over authorities in the West Bank - and is a colonist himself, demolitions saw a surge in 2023 and 2024, including in Area A, which is under Palestinian Authority jurisdiction, and Area B, which is under joint security control between the PA and Israel - soaring from 29 structures to 265.
To maintain a veneer of legality, Israeli courts issue standing demolition orders to Palestinian homes, often on the pretext of a lack of building permits. The orders can hang over families for years before they’re executed.
In contrast, Israel argues that building within existing colonies is necessary to accommodate the “natural growth” of colonies. Therefore, it much more easily gives approximately 1 million Jewish Israeli colonists there building permits and provides them with roads, electricity, water, and sewage systems that remain inaccessible to many neighboring Palestinians.
K.F.
