HEBRON, Thursday, November 21, 2019 (WAFA) – Israeli forces today afternoon demolished a Palestinian shack in Khallet Ad-Dabi‘ to the east of Yatta town in the southern West Bank district of Hebron, making 11 people homeless.
Coordinator of the Popular anti-Settlement Committees Rateb Jabour said that Israeli forces and officers of the so-called “Israeli Civil Administration” escorted a bulldozer to Khallet Ad-Dabi‘, where the heavy machine tore down a two-room shack built of tin and bricks, displacing 11 members of Amer Dababsa’s family.
Israel has often delivered demolition orders against Palestinian sheds, water wells and other structures in the area purportedly for being built without licenses to make room for the expansion of colonial settlements.
Khallet Ad-Dabi‘ is among dozens of small communities located in the southern Hebron hills, including the Masafer Yatta area, which rely heavily on animal husbandry as the main source of livelihood.
Masafer Yatta is classified as Area C, which is under full Israeli military control. Area C makes up around 60 percent of the area of the occupied West Bank, which Israel plans to annex after expelling its Palestinian population.
It has been designated as a closed Israeli military zone for training since 1980s and accordingly referred to as Firing Zone 918.
Israeli violations against the area include demolition of homes, residential structures and animal barns. Issuance of construction permits by Israel to local Palestinians in the area is non-existent.
In contrast, Israel much more easily gives over 600,000 Jewish Israeli settlers there building permits and provides them with roads, electricity, water and sewage systems that remain inaccessible to many neighboring Palestinians.
The “Civil Administration” is the name Israel gives to the body administering its military occupation of the West Bank.
Soldiers in the oxymoronically named Civil Administration 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.
