Israel destroys Palestinian animal shelters

Israeli bulldozers destroyed a large area of land today in Dura, near Hebron city, reported Wafa news agency.

The coordinator at the Palestinian popular committee against the wall and settlements in Yatta, Rateb Al-Jabour, said that Israeli forces instructed bulldozers to raze all structures on the land for settlement expansion close to the illegal settlement of Negohot.

The soldiers prevented residents, who were identified as the Ghannam and Odeh families, from accessing their land and forced them to leave.

There are now some 650,000 Israelis living in illegal Jewish-only settlements across occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank in violation of international law, with recent announcements of settlement expansion provoking condemnation from the international community.

Al-Jabour called on human rights organisations to intervene and put an end to Israel’s widely practiced policies of land demolitions and property confiscation in favour of settlement expansion of the city of Jerusalem, which it now calls “Greater Jerusalem”.

Meanwhile, Israeli occupation authorities demolished animal sheds in the Kisan village east of Bethlehem.

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The Deputy-Mayor of Kisan village, Ahmad Ghazal, stated that occupation soldiers demolished the village yesterday morning with a bulldozer and proceeded to destroy animal shelters used by two local residents under the pretext that they were built without a permit.

Israel’s widely practiced policies of home demolitions targeting entire families are acts of illegal collective punishment and come in direct violation of International Human Rights Law.