Wednesday 30 January 2013

Jewish settlers erect illegal West Bank outpost

An Israeli policeman mounted on a horse (R) stands near Palestinians, some throwing stones, during clashes as Israeli forces destroy their homes in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan on 28 January 2013. (Photo: Reuters - Ammar Awad)
 
Published Wednesday, January 30, 2013
 
Jewish settlers on Tuesday began constructing an illegal outpost on Palestinian-owned land in the West Bank village of Jayyous, local media reported.

In a further landgrab, Israeli forces also delivered eviction notices to a Palestinian neighborhood in northeast Jerusalem that houses about 200 residents, one day after bulldozers leveled several homes in the East Jerusalem village of Silwan.

Head of Jayyous Village Council Ghassan Harami told WAFA news agency that a number of settlers backed by Israeli soldiers set up seven mobile homes on land belonging to a Palestinian family.
The soldiers cleared the land to allow settlers to install electricity lines, he added.

A large part of Jayyous was expropriated by Israel in 2002 following the construction of the Apartheid Wall, which cut through the land. Jewish settlers then built homes on the land, but were forced out after Palestinians won a recent legal battle to reroute the wall.

Also on Tuesday in the northeast Jerusalem neighborhood of Fuheidant, Israeli forces delivered demolition notices to all Palestinian families in Fuheidat neighborhood east of Anata village.
Ma’an reported that about 200 Palestinians live in the neighborhood, which is located to the west of the large Anatot Israeli military base.

The Israeli forces said they plan to evict the neighborhood because of its close proximity to the base.
In 2011, a young Bedouin girl suffered severe injuries from gunshots in an incident her family blamed on the Israeli army, which denied involvement.

In 2007, a Palestinian girl died two days after being shot by a border police officer near Anata.
The notices come one day after soldiers demolished at least four buildings and a sewage network in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan under the pretext that they were built without a permit.
Bulldozers leveled land and uprooted olive trees in order to access the demolition sites, closing all the surrounding roads, witnesses told Ma’an.

The raid, shortly after the dawn prayer, prompted clashes with local residents. Witnesses said several youths were detained by Israeli police, including Khalid al-Zeir and Firas Awad.

Silwan – adjacent to the Old City's Dome of the Rock compound and Western Wall – is populated by a number of heavily guarded settler homes and is the frequent site of clashes with forces on arrest raids targeting the Palestinian population.

Israeli demolitions of Palestinian homes and other structures in the occupied West Bank occur almost daily under the pretext of absent building permits. The policy has drawn widespread condemnation from rights groups.

Roughly 94 percent of Palestinian applications for building permits are rejected, according to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions.

The group estimates that Israeli authorities have demolished about 27,000 Palestinian structures in the West Bank since 1967.
(Al-Akhbar, Ma’an)
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