Israeli bulldozers today demolished a livestock shack in Nabi Samuel village, northwest of Jerusalem, according to local sources.

Ibrahim Ubeid, a villager, said that an Israeli police force escorted a bulldozer to the village, where the heavy machinery tore down a 26-square-meter shack, leaving his sheep in the open.

Police also delivered demolition orders against two other sheep shacks.

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.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency