30 apr 2019
Israeli authorities delivered a stop-construction notice to solar panels, in the northern Jordan Valley, in the occupied West Bank, ordering halt of construction, on Monday.
Mutaz Bisharat, a Palestinian official in charge of Jordan Valley's Israeli settlements file at the Palestinian Authority (PA), said that the Israeli authorities raided the area and delivered a stop-construction notice to solar panels used for providing electricity to Palestinian residents.
Bisharat added that the solar panels were supplied through NGO humanitarian projects.
Forming a third of the occupied West Bank and with 88 percent of its land classified as Area C, the Jordan Valley has long been a strategic area of land unlikely to return to Palestinians following Israel's occupation in 1967.
Mutaz Bisharat, a Palestinian official in charge of Jordan Valley's Israeli settlements file at the Palestinian Authority (PA), said that the Israeli authorities raided the area and delivered a stop-construction notice to solar panels used for providing electricity to Palestinian residents.
Bisharat added that the solar panels were supplied through NGO humanitarian projects.
Forming a third of the occupied West Bank and with 88 percent of its land classified as Area C, the Jordan Valley has long been a strategic area of land unlikely to return to Palestinians following Israel's occupation in 1967.
25 apr 2019
The Palestinian Prime Minister Muhammad Ishtayeh received a delegation of the American Federation of Ramallah, Palestine, in his office in the central occupied West Bank city of Ramallah.
The PM updated the delegation on activities that would support the steadfastness of Palestinians in the health and education sectors.
Ishtayeh wished Palestinians a happy Easter, hoping that next year Palestinians would be celebrating in Jerusalem as the capital of the Palestinian state.
He called upon the federation to visit and invest in Palestine in support of the people.
Ishtayeh praised the federation’s role in supporting the health sector in Palestine, especially by bringing in Palestinian doctors to serve Palestinian hospitals, and building six new hospitals in the West Bank.
The PM updated the delegation on activities that would support the steadfastness of Palestinians in the health and education sectors.
Ishtayeh wished Palestinians a happy Easter, hoping that next year Palestinians would be celebrating in Jerusalem as the capital of the Palestinian state.
He called upon the federation to visit and invest in Palestine in support of the people.
Ishtayeh praised the federation’s role in supporting the health sector in Palestine, especially by bringing in Palestinian doctors to serve Palestinian hospitals, and building six new hospitals in the West Bank.
8 apr 2019
Israeli forces prevented the opening of an agricultural road, on Monday, in western Yatta City in the southern occupied West Bank district of Hebron.
Coordinator of a local settlement against the Israeli separation wall, Rateb al-Jbour, reported that Israeli forces prevented Palestinians in the al-Amad area in western Yatta from opening an agricultural road, southeast of a nearby illegal settlement, to be used by local farmers.
Al-Jbour pointed out that this is the second time Israel stops work on the road.
Around 3,000 Israeli settlers live in illegal Jewish-only settlements in the Yatta region, according to the Applied Research Institute Jerusalem.
The South Hebron Hills, known locally as Masafer Yatta, lie almost entirely in Area C, the 62 percent of the West Bank under full Israeli civil and security control since the 1993 Oslo Accords.
Masafer Yatta residents were expelled at the time of the establishment of a firing zone in the 1970s and were eventually allowed back following a long court battle, but are under the constant threat of being expelled or seeing their homes demolished.
Coordinator of a local settlement against the Israeli separation wall, Rateb al-Jbour, reported that Israeli forces prevented Palestinians in the al-Amad area in western Yatta from opening an agricultural road, southeast of a nearby illegal settlement, to be used by local farmers.
Al-Jbour pointed out that this is the second time Israel stops work on the road.
Around 3,000 Israeli settlers live in illegal Jewish-only settlements in the Yatta region, according to the Applied Research Institute Jerusalem.
The South Hebron Hills, known locally as Masafer Yatta, lie almost entirely in Area C, the 62 percent of the West Bank under full Israeli civil and security control since the 1993 Oslo Accords.
Masafer Yatta residents were expelled at the time of the establishment of a firing zone in the 1970s and were eventually allowed back following a long court battle, but are under the constant threat of being expelled or seeing their homes demolished.
2 apr 2019
By Jonathan Cook
The 350,000 Palestinian inhabitants of occupied East Jerusalem are caught between a rock and hard place, as Israel works ever harder to remove them from the holy city in which they were born, analysts and residents warn.
That process, they say, has only accelerated in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s decision a year ago to relocate the American embassy to Jerusalem, effectively endorsing the city as Israel’s exclusive capital.
“Israel wants Palestinians in Jerusalem to understand that they are trapped, that they are being strangled, in the hope they will conclude that life is better outside the city,” said Amneh Badran, a politics professor at Jerusalem’s Al Quds university.
Since Israel seized the eastern part of Jerusalem in 1967 and then illegally annexed it in 1981, it has intentionally left the status of its Palestinian population unresolved.
Israeli officials have made Palestinians there “permanent residents,” though, in practice, their residency is easily revoked. According to Israel’s own figures, more than 14,500 Palestinians have been expelled from the city of their birth since 1967, often compelling their families to join them in exile.
Further, Israel finished its concrete wall slicing through East Jerusalem three years ago, cutting some 140,000 Palestinian residents off from the rest of the city.
A raft of well-documented policies – including house demolitions, a chronic shortage of classrooms, lack of public services, municipal underfunding, land seizures, home evictions by Jewish settlers, denial of family unification, and police and settler violence – have intensified over the years.
At the same time, Israel has denied the Palestinian Authority, a supposed government-in-waiting in the West Bank, any role in East Jerusalem, leaving the city’s Palestinians even more isolated and weak.
All of these factors are designed to pressure Palestinians to leave, usually to areas outside the wall or to nearby West Bank cities like Ramallah or Bethlehem.
“In Jerusalem, Israel’s overriding aim is at its most transparent: to take control of the land but without its Palestinian inhabitants,” said Daoud Alg’ol, a researcher on Jerusalem.
Like others, Mr Alg’ol noted that Israel had stepped up its ‘Judaization’ policies in Jerusalem since the US relocated its embassy. “Israel is working more quickly, more confidently and more intensively because it believes Trump has given his blessing,” he said.
Demographic concerns dominated Israel’s thinking from the moment it occupied East Jerusalem in 1967, and subordinated it to the control of Jewish officials in West Jerusalem – in what Israel termed its newly “united capital”.
City boundaries were expanded eastwards to attach additional Palestinian lands to Jerusalem and then fill in the empty spaces with a ring of large Jewish settlements, said Aviv Tartasky, a researcher with Ir Amim, an organization that campaigns for equal rights in Jerusalem.
The goal, he added, was to shore up a permanent three-quarters Jewish majority – to ensure Palestinians could not stake a claim to the city and to allay Israeli fears that one day the Palestinians might gain control of the municipality through elections.
Israel has nonetheless faced a shrinking Jewish majority because of higher Palestinian birth rates. Today, Palestinians comprise about 40 per cent of the total population of this artificially enlarged Jerusalem.
Israel has therefore been aggressively pursuing a twin-pronged approach, according to analysts.
On one side, wide-ranging discriminatory policies – that harm Palestinians and favor Jewish settlers – have been designed to erode Palestinians’ connection to Jerusalem, encouraging them to leave. And, on the other, revocation of residency rights and the gradual redrawing of municipal boundaries have forcibly placed Palestinians outside the city – in what some experts term a “silent transfer” or administrative ethnic cleansing.
Israel’s efforts to disconnect Palestinians from Jerusalem are most visibly expressed in the change of Arabic script on road signs. The city’s Arabic name, Al Quds (the Holy), has been gradually replaced by the Israeli name, Urshalim, transliterated into Arabic.
The lack of services and municipal funding and high unemployment mean that three-quarters of Palestinians in East Jerusalem live below the poverty line. That compares to only 15 per cent for Israeli Jews nationally.
Despite these abysmal figures, the municipality has provided four social services offices in the city for Palestinians, compared to 19 for Israeli Jews.
Only half of Palestinian residents are provided with access to the water grid. There are similar deficiencies in postal services, road infrastructure, pavements and cultural centers.
Meanwhile, human rights groups have noted that East Jerusalem lacks at least 2,000 classrooms for Palestinian children, and that the condition of 43 per cent of existing rooms is inadequate. A third of pupils fail to complete basic schooling.
But the biggest pressure on Palestinian residents has been inflicted through grossly discriminatory planning rules, said Mr Tartasky.
In the areas outside the wall, Palestinians have been abandoned by the municipality – and receive no services or policing at all.
Israel’s long-term aim, said Mr Tartasky, had been exposed in a leak of private comments made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2015. He had proposed revoking the residency of the 140,000 Palestinians outside the wall.
“At the moment, the government is discussing putting these residents under the responsibility of the army,” Mr Tartasky said.
That would make them equivalent to Palestinians living in Israeli-controlled areas of the West Bank and sever their last connections to Jerusalem.
Meanwhile, on the inner side of the wall, Palestinian neighborhoods have been tightly constrained, with much of the land declared either “scenic areas” or national parks, in which construction is illegal, or reserved for Jewish settlements. The inevitable result has been extreme overcrowding.
In addition, Israel has denied most Palestinian neighborhoods’ masterplans, making it all but impossible to get building permits.
“The advantage for Israel is that planning regulations don’t look brutal – in fact, they can be presented as simple law enforcement,” said Mr Tartasky. “But if you have no place to live in Jerusalem, in the end you’ll have to move out of the city.”
An estimated 20,000 houses – about 40 per cent of the city’s Palestinian housing stock – are illegal and under threat of demolition. More than 800 homes, some housing several families, have been razed since 2004.
As well as the large purpose-built Jewish settlements located on Palestinian land in East Jerusalem, several thousand extremist settlers have taken over properties inside Palestinian neighborhoods, often with the backing of the Israeli courts.
Mr Tartasky noted that Israel has been accelerating legal efforts to evict Palestinians from their homes over the past year, with close to 200 families in and around the Old City currently facing court battles.
When settlers move in following such evictions, Ms Badran said, the character of the Palestinian neighborhoods rapidly changes.
“The settlers arrive, and then so do the police, the army, private security guards and municipal inspectors. The settlers have a machine behind them whose role is to make life as uncomfortable as possible for Palestinians. The message is: ‘You either accept your subjugation or leave’.”
In Silwan, where settler groups have established a touristic archaeological park in the midst of a densely populated Palestinian community just outside the Old City walls, life has been especially tough.
Mr Alg’ol, who lives in Silwan, noted that fortified settler compounds had been established throughout the area, many dozens more Palestinian families were facing evictions, excavations were taking place under Palestinian homes, closed-circuit TV watched residents 24 hours a day, and the security services were a constant presence. Many hundreds of children had been arrested in recent years, usually accused of stone throwing.
Israel’s newest move is the announcement of a cable car to bring tourists from West Jerusalem through Palestinian neighborhoods like Silwan to the holy sites of the Old City.
Mr Tartasky said touristic initiatives had become another planning weapon against Palestinians. “These projects, from the cable car to a series of promenades, are ways to connect one settlement to the next, bisecting Palestinian space. They strengthen the settlements and break apart Palestinian neighborhoods.”
Mr Alg’ol’s family was one of many in Silwan that had been told their lands were being confiscated for the cable car and a new police station.
“They want to turn our community into an archaeological Disneyland,” he said. “And we are in the way. They plan to keep going until we are all removed.”
- Jonathan Cook is a Nazareth-based journalist and winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism
The 350,000 Palestinian inhabitants of occupied East Jerusalem are caught between a rock and hard place, as Israel works ever harder to remove them from the holy city in which they were born, analysts and residents warn.
That process, they say, has only accelerated in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s decision a year ago to relocate the American embassy to Jerusalem, effectively endorsing the city as Israel’s exclusive capital.
“Israel wants Palestinians in Jerusalem to understand that they are trapped, that they are being strangled, in the hope they will conclude that life is better outside the city,” said Amneh Badran, a politics professor at Jerusalem’s Al Quds university.
Since Israel seized the eastern part of Jerusalem in 1967 and then illegally annexed it in 1981, it has intentionally left the status of its Palestinian population unresolved.
Israeli officials have made Palestinians there “permanent residents,” though, in practice, their residency is easily revoked. According to Israel’s own figures, more than 14,500 Palestinians have been expelled from the city of their birth since 1967, often compelling their families to join them in exile.
Further, Israel finished its concrete wall slicing through East Jerusalem three years ago, cutting some 140,000 Palestinian residents off from the rest of the city.
A raft of well-documented policies – including house demolitions, a chronic shortage of classrooms, lack of public services, municipal underfunding, land seizures, home evictions by Jewish settlers, denial of family unification, and police and settler violence – have intensified over the years.
At the same time, Israel has denied the Palestinian Authority, a supposed government-in-waiting in the West Bank, any role in East Jerusalem, leaving the city’s Palestinians even more isolated and weak.
All of these factors are designed to pressure Palestinians to leave, usually to areas outside the wall or to nearby West Bank cities like Ramallah or Bethlehem.
“In Jerusalem, Israel’s overriding aim is at its most transparent: to take control of the land but without its Palestinian inhabitants,” said Daoud Alg’ol, a researcher on Jerusalem.
Like others, Mr Alg’ol noted that Israel had stepped up its ‘Judaization’ policies in Jerusalem since the US relocated its embassy. “Israel is working more quickly, more confidently and more intensively because it believes Trump has given his blessing,” he said.
Demographic concerns dominated Israel’s thinking from the moment it occupied East Jerusalem in 1967, and subordinated it to the control of Jewish officials in West Jerusalem – in what Israel termed its newly “united capital”.
City boundaries were expanded eastwards to attach additional Palestinian lands to Jerusalem and then fill in the empty spaces with a ring of large Jewish settlements, said Aviv Tartasky, a researcher with Ir Amim, an organization that campaigns for equal rights in Jerusalem.
The goal, he added, was to shore up a permanent three-quarters Jewish majority – to ensure Palestinians could not stake a claim to the city and to allay Israeli fears that one day the Palestinians might gain control of the municipality through elections.
Israel has nonetheless faced a shrinking Jewish majority because of higher Palestinian birth rates. Today, Palestinians comprise about 40 per cent of the total population of this artificially enlarged Jerusalem.
Israel has therefore been aggressively pursuing a twin-pronged approach, according to analysts.
On one side, wide-ranging discriminatory policies – that harm Palestinians and favor Jewish settlers – have been designed to erode Palestinians’ connection to Jerusalem, encouraging them to leave. And, on the other, revocation of residency rights and the gradual redrawing of municipal boundaries have forcibly placed Palestinians outside the city – in what some experts term a “silent transfer” or administrative ethnic cleansing.
Israel’s efforts to disconnect Palestinians from Jerusalem are most visibly expressed in the change of Arabic script on road signs. The city’s Arabic name, Al Quds (the Holy), has been gradually replaced by the Israeli name, Urshalim, transliterated into Arabic.
The lack of services and municipal funding and high unemployment mean that three-quarters of Palestinians in East Jerusalem live below the poverty line. That compares to only 15 per cent for Israeli Jews nationally.
Despite these abysmal figures, the municipality has provided four social services offices in the city for Palestinians, compared to 19 for Israeli Jews.
Only half of Palestinian residents are provided with access to the water grid. There are similar deficiencies in postal services, road infrastructure, pavements and cultural centers.
Meanwhile, human rights groups have noted that East Jerusalem lacks at least 2,000 classrooms for Palestinian children, and that the condition of 43 per cent of existing rooms is inadequate. A third of pupils fail to complete basic schooling.
But the biggest pressure on Palestinian residents has been inflicted through grossly discriminatory planning rules, said Mr Tartasky.
In the areas outside the wall, Palestinians have been abandoned by the municipality – and receive no services or policing at all.
Israel’s long-term aim, said Mr Tartasky, had been exposed in a leak of private comments made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2015. He had proposed revoking the residency of the 140,000 Palestinians outside the wall.
“At the moment, the government is discussing putting these residents under the responsibility of the army,” Mr Tartasky said.
That would make them equivalent to Palestinians living in Israeli-controlled areas of the West Bank and sever their last connections to Jerusalem.
Meanwhile, on the inner side of the wall, Palestinian neighborhoods have been tightly constrained, with much of the land declared either “scenic areas” or national parks, in which construction is illegal, or reserved for Jewish settlements. The inevitable result has been extreme overcrowding.
In addition, Israel has denied most Palestinian neighborhoods’ masterplans, making it all but impossible to get building permits.
“The advantage for Israel is that planning regulations don’t look brutal – in fact, they can be presented as simple law enforcement,” said Mr Tartasky. “But if you have no place to live in Jerusalem, in the end you’ll have to move out of the city.”
An estimated 20,000 houses – about 40 per cent of the city’s Palestinian housing stock – are illegal and under threat of demolition. More than 800 homes, some housing several families, have been razed since 2004.
As well as the large purpose-built Jewish settlements located on Palestinian land in East Jerusalem, several thousand extremist settlers have taken over properties inside Palestinian neighborhoods, often with the backing of the Israeli courts.
Mr Tartasky noted that Israel has been accelerating legal efforts to evict Palestinians from their homes over the past year, with close to 200 families in and around the Old City currently facing court battles.
When settlers move in following such evictions, Ms Badran said, the character of the Palestinian neighborhoods rapidly changes.
“The settlers arrive, and then so do the police, the army, private security guards and municipal inspectors. The settlers have a machine behind them whose role is to make life as uncomfortable as possible for Palestinians. The message is: ‘You either accept your subjugation or leave’.”
In Silwan, where settler groups have established a touristic archaeological park in the midst of a densely populated Palestinian community just outside the Old City walls, life has been especially tough.
Mr Alg’ol, who lives in Silwan, noted that fortified settler compounds had been established throughout the area, many dozens more Palestinian families were facing evictions, excavations were taking place under Palestinian homes, closed-circuit TV watched residents 24 hours a day, and the security services were a constant presence. Many hundreds of children had been arrested in recent years, usually accused of stone throwing.
Israel’s newest move is the announcement of a cable car to bring tourists from West Jerusalem through Palestinian neighborhoods like Silwan to the holy sites of the Old City.
Mr Tartasky said touristic initiatives had become another planning weapon against Palestinians. “These projects, from the cable car to a series of promenades, are ways to connect one settlement to the next, bisecting Palestinian space. They strengthen the settlements and break apart Palestinian neighborhoods.”
Mr Alg’ol’s family was one of many in Silwan that had been told their lands were being confiscated for the cable car and a new police station.
“They want to turn our community into an archaeological Disneyland,” he said. “And we are in the way. They plan to keep going until we are all removed.”
- Jonathan Cook is a Nazareth-based journalist and winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism
19 mar 2019
Staff members from the Israeli Civil Administration delivered a stop-construction order to the Palestinian Equestrian Club building in Qalandiya village, north of the central occupied West Bank district of Jerusalem.
According to local sources, Israeli forces along with staff members from the Israeli Civil Administration stormed the area and delivered a stop-construction order to the Equestrian Club.
Sources confirmed that residents face a construction crisis as they have only been able to build in the center of the village, which makes up 150 dunams (37 acres) out of the original 4,000 dunams (988 acres).
Sources added that the order was issued under the pretext that the building was being built without the nearly-impossible to obtain Israeli permit.
Israel uses the pretext of building without a permit to carry out demolitions of Palestinian-owned homes on a regular basis.
Nearly all Palestinian applications for building permits in Area C are denied by the Israeli authorities, forcing communities to build illegally.
Meanwhile, the estimated 550,000 Jewish Israeli settlers in the occupied Palestinian territory are more easily given building permits and allowed to expand their homes and properties, despite living in settlements that violate international law.
According to local sources, Israeli forces along with staff members from the Israeli Civil Administration stormed the area and delivered a stop-construction order to the Equestrian Club.
Sources confirmed that residents face a construction crisis as they have only been able to build in the center of the village, which makes up 150 dunams (37 acres) out of the original 4,000 dunams (988 acres).
Sources added that the order was issued under the pretext that the building was being built without the nearly-impossible to obtain Israeli permit.
Israel uses the pretext of building without a permit to carry out demolitions of Palestinian-owned homes on a regular basis.
Nearly all Palestinian applications for building permits in Area C are denied by the Israeli authorities, forcing communities to build illegally.
Meanwhile, the estimated 550,000 Jewish Israeli settlers in the occupied Palestinian territory are more easily given building permits and allowed to expand their homes and properties, despite living in settlements that violate international law.
The Israeli municipal authority in Occupied Jerusalem on Tuesday demolished, without prior notice, a building under construction belonging to al-Razi School in Shu’fat refugee camp, northeast of the holy city.
Local sources said that Israeli troops stormed the camp and evacuated all the students, teachers and employees from the school before bulldozers embarked on knocking down the two-story annexe.
Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers closed the military road barrier at the entrance to the camp and prevented Palestinian citizens and vehicles from moving in both directions.
Al-Razi School, which serves a wide segment of Palestinian children from the camp, was in need for another building to accommodate more students.
Local sources said that Israeli troops stormed the camp and evacuated all the students, teachers and employees from the school before bulldozers embarked on knocking down the two-story annexe.
Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers closed the military road barrier at the entrance to the camp and prevented Palestinian citizens and vehicles from moving in both directions.
Al-Razi School, which serves a wide segment of Palestinian children from the camp, was in need for another building to accommodate more students.
18 mar 2019
The Israeli army issued, Sunday, demolition orders targeting a number of inhabited and under-construction homes in Khallet al-Nahel and Khallet al-Qotin areas, southeast of Bethlehem, in the occupied West Bank.
Hasan Breijiyya, the coordinator of the National Commission against the Annexation Wall and Colonies in Bethlehem, said a large military force invaded the two areas and handed the demolition orders to the families.
He added that the orders targeted seven homes, some are inhabited, and some are still under-construction.
Owners of two of the homes have been identified as Ahmad Ismael Mezher and Mohammad Yahia Ayyash.
Mezher told the Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA) that he previously received similar orders, and filed all needed documents to obtain permits, but never received a response from the “Civil Administration Office,” the executive branch of Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine.
The two areas, as well as many Palestinian communities, are subject to frequent invasions and demolition of homes and property, amidst Israel’s ongoing illegal construction of expansion of its colonies, in direct violation of International Law and the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Hasan Breijiyya, the coordinator of the National Commission against the Annexation Wall and Colonies in Bethlehem, said a large military force invaded the two areas and handed the demolition orders to the families.
He added that the orders targeted seven homes, some are inhabited, and some are still under-construction.
Owners of two of the homes have been identified as Ahmad Ismael Mezher and Mohammad Yahia Ayyash.
Mezher told the Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA) that he previously received similar orders, and filed all needed documents to obtain permits, but never received a response from the “Civil Administration Office,” the executive branch of Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine.
The two areas, as well as many Palestinian communities, are subject to frequent invasions and demolition of homes and property, amidst Israel’s ongoing illegal construction of expansion of its colonies, in direct violation of International Law and the Fourth Geneva Convention.
12 mar 2019
The Israeli occupation forces (IOF) on Monday delivered demolition and stop-work orders against five Palestinian homes in Hares village, west of Salfit in the West Bank.
Chief of the village Tayseer Souf reported that five local residents received demolition and stop-work orders issued for their homes in the eastern area of the village on allegations they are located in an Israeli-controlled area (Area C).
Recently, the Israeli occupation authority has intensified its demolition campaign against Palestinian homes and structures throughout the occupied Palestinian territories.
Chief of the village Tayseer Souf reported that five local residents received demolition and stop-work orders issued for their homes in the eastern area of the village on allegations they are located in an Israeli-controlled area (Area C).
Recently, the Israeli occupation authority has intensified its demolition campaign against Palestinian homes and structures throughout the occupied Palestinian territories.
11 mar 2019
Israeli forces razed and leveled the debris of a Palestinian elementary school in the al-Simiya village in the southern occupied West Bank district of Hebron, on Monday.
Israeli forces also took down the al-Tahaddi 13 School sign and sealed off the road leading to the school with dirt mounds.
The school, that is made up of mobile class rooms, was built by the Palestinian Ministry of Education late 2018, at a cost of €40, 000, and was scheduled to open December before being demolished by Israel.
Head of the Directorate of Education in Hebron, Khalid Abu Sharar, said that Israeli military bulldozers raided the school area and carried out the razing and leveled what is left of the school to the ground.
Abu Sharar condemned the assault against the school, pointing out that it would not stop the Ministry of Education from rebuilding the school.
The al-Tahaddi 13 School consists of seven classrooms, and serves 50 students.
Israeli forces also took down the al-Tahaddi 13 School sign and sealed off the road leading to the school with dirt mounds.
The school, that is made up of mobile class rooms, was built by the Palestinian Ministry of Education late 2018, at a cost of €40, 000, and was scheduled to open December before being demolished by Israel.
Head of the Directorate of Education in Hebron, Khalid Abu Sharar, said that Israeli military bulldozers raided the school area and carried out the razing and leveled what is left of the school to the ground.
Abu Sharar condemned the assault against the school, pointing out that it would not stop the Ministry of Education from rebuilding the school.
The al-Tahaddi 13 School consists of seven classrooms, and serves 50 students.
The Israeli occupation forces (IOF) on Monday handed a Palestinian citizen a stop-work order for his house, confiscated construction materials and searched other homes in al-Khalil province in the West Bank.
Local sources said that Israeli troops stormed al-Samu town, south of al-Khalil, and handed Mustafa al-Baddarin a notice ordering him to stop construction work on his house, searched it and seized building materials.
Israeli forces also stormed the southern area of al-Khalil city, and ransacked several homes.
Meanwhile, the IOF set up several makeshift checkpoints at the main entrances to the towns of Sa’ir and Halhul and at the northern and southern entrances to al-Khalil city and embarked on searching cars and citizens and checking their IDs.
Local sources said that Israeli troops stormed al-Samu town, south of al-Khalil, and handed Mustafa al-Baddarin a notice ordering him to stop construction work on his house, searched it and seized building materials.
Israeli forces also stormed the southern area of al-Khalil city, and ransacked several homes.
Meanwhile, the IOF set up several makeshift checkpoints at the main entrances to the towns of Sa’ir and Halhul and at the northern and southern entrances to al-Khalil city and embarked on searching cars and citizens and checking their IDs.
7 mar 2019
A Palestinian resident of the Qalansuwa City in central Israel was forced to demolish his own home upon order by the Israeli authorities, on Wednesday evening.
Locals reported that Saleh Jamal demolished his own home to avoid Israeli fines and costs of demolition.
The Israeli authorities ordered the demolition under the pretext that the building lacks the necessary licenses.
Israel had demolished another house belonging to the same family several years ago.
While Israeli law guarantees Palestinians the same equality as other citizens, in practice there are claims of discrimination in government funding and a raft of other issues, nearly all Palestinian applications for building permits are denied by the Israeli authorities, forcing communities to build illegally.
Israeli Palestinian rights group Adalah says that only 4.6% of new homes built in Israel are in Palestinian towns and villages, even though Palestinians make up over 20% of the population.
The difficulty for Palestinians in Israel to obtain building permits forces them to expand or build homes and structures without permits, which are liable to later be torn down.
In 2015, the United Nations, as well as other members of the international community, have verbally condemned Israel's systematic destruction of Palestinian homes and declared the practice as illegal and unfair.
Locals reported that Saleh Jamal demolished his own home to avoid Israeli fines and costs of demolition.
The Israeli authorities ordered the demolition under the pretext that the building lacks the necessary licenses.
Israel had demolished another house belonging to the same family several years ago.
While Israeli law guarantees Palestinians the same equality as other citizens, in practice there are claims of discrimination in government funding and a raft of other issues, nearly all Palestinian applications for building permits are denied by the Israeli authorities, forcing communities to build illegally.
Israeli Palestinian rights group Adalah says that only 4.6% of new homes built in Israel are in Palestinian towns and villages, even though Palestinians make up over 20% of the population.
The difficulty for Palestinians in Israel to obtain building permits forces them to expand or build homes and structures without permits, which are liable to later be torn down.
In 2015, the United Nations, as well as other members of the international community, have verbally condemned Israel's systematic destruction of Palestinian homes and declared the practice as illegal and unfair.
3 mar 2019
As part of a recent decision to reject almost all Palestinian building requests, Israel’s planning and building committee in Occupied Jerusalem turned down some 20 applications submitted by Palestinians to obtain residential construction permits.
According to Haaretz newspaper, the Israeli committee intends to rule out almost any future Palestinian construction in east Jerusalem, whose native residents face a serious housing shortage due to years of deliberate neglect of Palestinian neighborhoods, including the lack of any zoning plans and infrastructure in these areas.
One of the most difficult obstacles to Palestinian construction in Jerusalem is the fact that ownership of about 90 percent of land in the eastern part of the city is not registered under anyone’s name.
Consequently, Palestinian residents cannot prove property ownership and therefore they cannot submit applications for construction permits.
However, the Israeli authorities wants to exploit such a situation to refuse all applications for construction permits submitted by Palestinians who do not possess ownership documents.
Such a problem had been dealt with in past decades with the “mukhtar protocol.” Anyone wanting to build on their land must collect signatures of consent from mukhtars, who are local leaders or clan heads, Haaretz noted.
According to Haaretz newspaper, the Israeli committee intends to rule out almost any future Palestinian construction in east Jerusalem, whose native residents face a serious housing shortage due to years of deliberate neglect of Palestinian neighborhoods, including the lack of any zoning plans and infrastructure in these areas.
One of the most difficult obstacles to Palestinian construction in Jerusalem is the fact that ownership of about 90 percent of land in the eastern part of the city is not registered under anyone’s name.
Consequently, Palestinian residents cannot prove property ownership and therefore they cannot submit applications for construction permits.
However, the Israeli authorities wants to exploit such a situation to refuse all applications for construction permits submitted by Palestinians who do not possess ownership documents.
Such a problem had been dealt with in past decades with the “mukhtar protocol.” Anyone wanting to build on their land must collect signatures of consent from mukhtars, who are local leaders or clan heads, Haaretz noted.
