Several Palestinian Homes Demolished by Israeli Soldiers in Occupied West Bank

Israeli forces demolished 4 houses in the occupied lands, illegally razing five houses in total belonging to the Palestinians on Tuesday, Palestinian news sources reported.

Citing a local activist, Wafa reported that Israeli forces demolished four houses in Shi‘b al Butum, one of the 28 hamlets making up Masafer Yatta village.

Fuad al-Amour said gun-toting Israeli soldiers used a bulldozer to raze the four houses, each of which measured only 80 square meters in area, belonging to four members of the Jabarin family, reducing them to rubble, under the pretext that the buildings had been constructed without obtaining an official permit.

Amour said this was the fourth time that these houses were being razed within two years in order to displace the indigenous Palestinian community and take over their land for colonial settlement expansion.

Nidal Younis, the Masafer Yatta village council head, said the Israeli occupation authorities had decided to carry out the collective eviction of the indigenous Palestinian residents of the eight hamlets.

Wafa also cited another local activist as reporting that Israeli forces demolished a Palestinian-inhabited house elsewhere in Yatta town, south of the city of al-Khalil (Hebron) in the southern West Bank.

A local activist, Rateb al-Jabour, said that in the Israeli forces' Tuesday operation, armed Israeli troops accompanied by two bulldozers demolished a 170 square-meter house in the area of Ma'een, which was owned by local resident Hamad Mohammad, citing the same pretext.

Raeb Mohammad, a resident, said that Jabour's lawyer had stopped the Israeli demolition of the house after he appealed to the court.

Israel’s top court, in May, gave Israeli forces the green light to evict tens of hundreds of Palestinians out of their homes in the Masafer Yatta area.

Located in Area C of the West Bank, this area is under full Israeli administrative and military control and has been subjected to repeated Israeli violations by settlers and soldiers targeting their main source of living, livestock.

It has been designated as a closed Israeli military zone for training since the 1980s and is accordingly referred to as Firing Zone 918.

Since this declaration, indigenous Palestinian residents have been at risk of forced eviction, demolition and forcible transfer. The two villages of Khirbet Sarura and Kharoubeh no longer exist after their homes were demolished.

"Approximately 20 percent of the West Bank has been designated as 'Firing Zones,' affecting over 5,000 Palestinians from 38 communities," the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said. "Currently, Masafer Yatta is home to 215 Palestinian households, including about 1,150 people, of which 569 are children."

The UN agency has warned the Tel Avivi regime that the Israeli regime’s forcible mass eviction of Palestinians from their homes in the Masafer Yatta area of the occupied West Bank amounts to a “war crime.”

The Israeli occupation forces in the area have deprived residents of access to basic amenities including drainage and permission to construct to meet the needs of the growing population in order to force Palestinians to move out of the Palestinian lands.