JERUSALEM, March 11, 2017 (WAFA) -The Israeli authorities demolished two Palestinian-owned structures in Area C in the Hebron governorate and two in East Jerusalem on the grounds they were built without permits, displacing 23 Palestinians and affecting 50 others, a United Agency said on Friday.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) to the occupied Palestinian territories said in its bi-weekly report on Protection of Civilians covering the period between February 21 and March 6 that in addition to these demolitions, Israel issued on March 5 final demolition orders against almost all 140 structures in the Palestinian Bedouin community of Khan al Ahmar-Abu el-Helu, east of Jerusalem, including a donor-funded primary school serving around 170 children.
This is one of the 46 Bedouin communities in the central West Bank in Area C, which is under full Israeli military rule and makes up 60 per cent of the area of the West Bank, Israel is seeking to relocate to three designated sites with a goal to evacuate most of that area from its Palestinian population in order to inhabit it with Israeli Jewish settlers.
Also, final demolition orders were issued against 13 structures in four communities in the Massafer Yatta area, south of Hebron, and against a donor-funded school in the Khirbet Tana community, east of Nablus, both considered Area C.
On two other occasions, Israeli forces displaced for several hours each time 30 families from Khirbet Tana and Lifjim, two herding communities in the northern Jordan Valley, during an Israeli military training exercise.
In another community in the same area, Khirbet al-Ras al-Ahmar, the Israeli authorities seized four agricultural vehicles, used for farming and for water supply. All these communities are located in an area designated as a "firing zone" for military training.
In Gaza, OCHA said that on at least 44 occasions during the two-week period of the report, Israeli forces opened warning or direct fire into the Access Restricted Areas on land and sea, leading to the injury of two Palestinian civilians, near the fence separating Israel and Gaza, reportedly while trying to infiltrate Israel.
Palestinians in Gaza are not allowed within 300-600 meter deep inside Gaza of the border fence with Israel.
However, on two separate occasions, Israeli forces entered and carried out levelling and excavations inside Gaza, near the perimeter fence.
In the context of Israel‘s enforcement of access restriction into the sea, five fishermen were detained by Israeli naval forces and their boat and fishing nets were seized.
Israel s the fishing zone for Palestinians to three nautical miles even through the Oslo agreement allowed them to sail 12 nautical miles into sea of the Gaza shore.
M.K.
