Zionist Regime Forces Demolish Homes of Two Palestinians
Zionist military forces have razed two Palestinian houses in the occupied West Bank despite international condemnation of the regime’s demolition campaign against Palestinian homes and properties.
Local residents and witnesses said on Monday that Israeli soldiers and bulldozers rolled into the Qalandiya refugee camp and leveled two houses to the ground.
The demolition was carried out against the homes of the families of Issa Assaf and Annan Hammed, who were shot dead by Israeli forces during an alleged attack late last year near the Old City of al-Quds
Israeli forces also shot and injured at least four Palestinians during a series of fierce clashes in the troubled region.
A spokesperson of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said Israeli forces fired tear gas canisters and stun grenades at ambulances to prevent them from entering the camp to evacuate the wounded people, adding, “Israeli forces prevented ambulances at gunpoint from accessing the area.”
Israel routinely demolishes the homes of alleged Palestinian assailants. International rights groups and organizations have strongly denounced the demolition of Palestinian houses by Israeli troops.
Last month, the United Nations said Israel’s demolition campaign against Palestinian homes and structures across the occupied West Bank had increased four times compared to 2015, and left a record number of 808 Palestinians displaced since the start of 2016.
The UN announced in late April that a total of 588 Palestinian structures had been razed since January, adding that the demolitions have affected more than 1,000 people as they have lost structures related to their source of income.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) said in a statement on April 8 that 124 Palestinians, including 60 children, had been made homeless in a single day as a result of Israeli demolitions in the West Bank.
Tensions have heightened in the occupied territories since August 2015, when Israel imposed restrictions on the entry of Palestinian worshipers into the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in East al-Quds (Jerusalem).
More than 220 Palestinians, including children and women, have lost their lives at the hands of Israeli forces since the beginning of last October. Some 30 Israelis have also been killed since then.
Zionist entity approves plans to build 800 new settler units
On the other hand, Zionist entity has approved plans to construct 800 new housing units for settlers in and around the occupied East al-Quds (Jerusalem) in open defiance of international law.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the minister of military affairs, Avigdor Liberman, approved the new construction plans on Sunday, Haaretz quoted an Israeli official as saying but did not name him.
According to the report, 560 units will be built in the settlement of Maale Adumim in the occupied West Bank near East al-Quds (Jerusalem).
Another 140 units will be built in the settlement of Ramot and about 100 in Har Homa and Pisgat Zeev settlements on the outskirts of al-Quds.
No official announcement has been made yet, however.
The official also claimed that Netanyahu also approved the construction of 600 houses for Palestinians in the Arab neighborhood of Beit Safafa.
On Saturday, Netanyahu also reopened a tender contract for the construction of 42 units in the Kiryat Arba settlement located in the southern West Bank city of al-Khalil (Hebron). The project had been halted for a year and a half as contractors refrained from taking part.
Earlier on Sunday, the United Nations (UN)’s special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, Nickolay Mladenov, warned that the “two-state” solution to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis has faded away.
His remarks came after a report by the Middle East Quartet — which is mediating the so-called peace process in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — that directly called on the Tel Aviv regime to put an end to its settlement expansion activities in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The UN and most countries regard the Israeli settlements as illegal because the territories they are built on were captured by Israel in a war in 1967 and are hence subject to the Geneva Conventions, which forbid construction on occupied lands.
More than half a million Israelis live in over 230 illegal settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East al-Quds.
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