BETHLEHEM, The Israeli occupation authorities today ordered a halt on the construction of a house in Nahalin town, west Bethlehem, according to local sources.

Deputy head of Nahalin Municipal Office, Hani Fonoun, told WAFA that Israeli military forces and staff of the so-called Israeli Civil Administration handed a resident a notice, ordering him to stop the construction of his 120 square-meter house, east of the town.

He added that the soldiers seized a concrete pump and a mixer from the construction site.

Israel demolishes Palestinian houses and structures almost on a daily basis as a means to achieve “demographic control” of the occupied territories.

Israel denies planning permits for Palestinians to build on their own land or to extend existing houses to accommodate natural growth, particularly in Jerusalem and Area C, which constitutes 60 percent of the occupied West Bank and falls under full Israeli military rule, forcing residents to build without obtaining rarely-granted permits to provide shelters for their families.

In contrast, Israel argues that building within existing colonial settlements is necessary to accommodate the “natural growth” of settlers. Therefore, it much more easily gives the estimated 550,000 Jewish Israeli settlers there building permits and provides them with roads, electricity, water and sewage systems that remain inaccessible to many neighboring Palestinians.

The “Civil Administration” is the name Israel gives to the body administering its military occupation of the West Bank.

Soldiers in the oxymoronically named Civil Administration determine where Palestinians may live, where and when they may travel (including to other parts of the occupied territories like Gaza and East Jerusalem), whether they can build or expand homes on their own land, whether they own that land at all, whether an Israeli settler can takeover that land among others.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency