Middle East Monitor / April 26, 2022
Israeli forces yesterday razed land belonging to Palestinian residents in Bethlehem’s southern village of Al-Jab’a.
The director of the Bethlehem office of the Wall and Settlements Resistance Commission, Hassan Breijeh, told Safa that the Israeli occupation forces razed “about 10 dunums [2.5 acres] of Palestinian land and other areas in the Marah Tohme area.”
Breijeh pointed out that the occupation forces had handed the Palestinian landowners demolition notices “before they began bulldozing and razing trees.”
Such demolitions are considered a war crime under the Geneva conventions and are illegal under international law, according to which an occupying power cannot forcibly transfer the civilian population under its occupation or confiscate their lands.
Israel, however, routinely demolishes Palestinian properties and farmland to ethnically cleanse the area of Palestinians. The annexed Palestinian lands are then used for building new illegal settlements or expanding the hundreds of illegal Israeli settlements already built in the occupied Palestinian territories.
