Israeli forces today delivered demolition orders against some 20 Palestinian houses in Rujeib town, east of the West Bank city of Nablus, according to local sources.

Ghassan Daghlas, who monitors Israeli colonial settlement activities in the northern West Bank, said that Israeli troops barged their way into the southeastern part of the town and handed demolition orders against some 20 houses.

Some of the houses slated for demolition are inhabited by families while the others are still under construction.

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 over 700,000 Jewish Israeli settlers there building permits and provides them with roads, electricity, water and sewage systems that remain inaccessible to many neighboring Palestinians.

Source: Palestinian New & Info Agency