HEBRON, Israeli bulldozers today razed a plot of Palestinian land and uprooted 120 fruitful trees in Birin village, southeast of Hebron city, according to local sources.
Fou’ad al-Amour, an activist, told WAFA that the Israeli forces escorted a bulldozer into the village, where the heavy machinery leveled a three-donums plot of land and uprooted 120 olive and almond trees.
He added the occupation forces also demolished a rainwater harvesting well in Khalet al-Furn area, close to the illegal Israeli settlement of Bani Haiver, east of Hebron.
According to the Land Research Center, Israel has frequently issued military stop-construction and demolition orders against various residential and agricultural structures and dismantled barns in the locality, citing the lack of rarely-issued construction permits as a pretext.
In December 2017, Israel delivered stop-construction orders to the locality’s sole clinic and building intended to serve as a primary school for the community’s 60 children
In June 2019, as showed in a PLO’s Negotiations Affairs Department’s report, Israel seized 4,800 dunams of land from several localities, including Birin, for the expansion of Bani Haiver.
Located to the southwest of Bani Na‘im, Birin has a population of 160 and is flanked by Bani Haiver colonial settlement from the east and the settler-only bypass Road No. 60 from the west. Its residents were originally expelled from Naqab in southern Israel and now depend on agriculture and livestock as their main source of livelihood.
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