NABLUS, Israeli bulldozers today leveled an agricultural structure and a carwash in Huwara town, south of Nablus, according to a local activist.

Ghassan Daghlas, who monitors colonial settlement activities in the northern West Bank, said that Israeli forces escorted a bulldozers to al-Lahf area in the town, where the heavy machineries razed a 120-square-meter livestock shack, which was constructed some 30 years ago.

He added that the bulldozers also knocked down a carwash close to the main street leading to the town, reducing it to rubble.

Israel demolishes Palestinian houses and structures almost on a daily basis as a means to achieve what it describes as “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 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: Palestine News & Info Agency