Middle East Monitor / December 14, 2021
The Chairman of Israel’s Yesha Council, David Elhayani, yesterday called for the demolition of 95,000 Palestinian homes built in recent years in the so-called ‘Area C’ of the occupied West Bank.
“We need to stop thinking about what the Palestinians are doing and start thinking about what we have to do. Israel knows how to deal with illegal construction, as it did after approving the Kaminitz Law,” Elhayani was quoted by Channel 7 as saying.
The Kaminitz Law, an amendment to the Planning and Building Law of 1965, stipulates increasing Palestinian home demolitions and further criminalization of what Israel calls “unauthorized housing and construction” in the occupied West Bank.
“The heads of settlement councils are abandoned in the campaign against Palestinian construction, and we do not have the legal tools to deal with the seizure that takes place against us,” the settlements official added.
Area C, which makes up about 60 per cent of the occupied Palestinian territory, is under both Israel’s military and administrative control as per the Oslo Accords. It is also the site of the majority of the more than 200 illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank, where more than 400,000 settlers live.
