Alwaght- Israeli Regime has bulldozed 23 Palestinian houses in two impoverished villages in occupied West Bank, as human rights groups painted the action as one of the biggest demolitions in the past decade.
Despite long-running international campaign to protect the eight villages in 300-sq-km-zone that was declared restricted by Israeli regime in the 1970s, apartheid regime's bulldozers moved in to Khirbet Jenbah and the nearby hamlet of Khirbat el-Halawa just after dawn on Tuesday morning, demolishing a dozen homes in Jenbah itself as well as other structures, The Guardian reported.
Human rights groups have repeatedly challenged Tel Aviv regime’s claim to the land, arguing it is illegal to establish a military zone in occupied territory.
110 people made homeless during the demolitions, including dozens of children from 12 different families, NGO Peace Now reported.
The families, many of whose homes are attached to caves that are also used as houses, argue that their families have lived on the land since long before Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967.
Villages like Jenbah are some of the poorest in the West Bank, unconnected to the grid and reliant on donated solar panels, some of which were destroyed by the Israeli Regime military.
On Tuesday villagers dug through the remains of their homes, set up temporary tents and transported furniture they had managed to save from houses to the places they planned to sleep.
The Guardian cited Khalid Hussein Jabari, who lost his house in Khirbet Jenbah along with other family members as saying “They came the day before and marked the houses for demolition. We knew it was serious because some of the villagers who can understand Hebrew heard the soldiers talking about how the buildings were going to be destroyed".
It is also not the first time the Israeli Regime forces have destroyed Khirbet Jenbah. The village was demolished in its entirety in 1999.
Campaigners on behalf of Jenbah and other villages in the south Hebron hills – and more widely in Area C – point out, however, that Tel Aviv Regime consistently refuses to give building permits to native villagers or permit development of communities despite allowing construction by Zionist settlers in the same hills.
Commenting on the demolitions, Sarit Michaeli of the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem said: “This basically means we are back to square one. The government wants to remove them. The residents object".
