[News] Palestine - Israeli forces demolish water cisterns in Hebron-area village

[Anti-Imperialist News]

  Israeli forces demolish water cisterns in Hebron-area village

Sept. 27, 2016  - HEBRON
http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=773311

Israeli forces demolished water wells in the southern occupied West Bank 
district of Hebron on Tuesday morning, municipal sources said.

An official from the municipality of Sair told Ma’an that Israeli troops 
demolished four wells in agricultural lands in the Jurat al-Kheil area 
east of Sair used for sheep to drink and to irrigate crops. The wells 
reportedly belonged to Ziyad Mahmoud Shalalda, Ahmad Muhammad Shalalda, 
Ibrahim Muhammad Shalalda, and Nabil Shihada Shalalda.

The municipality official added that Israeli forces leveled lands in the 
area as well. A spokesperson for COGAT, the Israeli agency responsible 
for implementing Israeli policies in Palestinian territory, told Ma’an 
that “enforcement measures were carried out against four cisterns and an 
illegal structure in the Sair region, which were built without the 
required permits,” adding that Israeli authorities had previously 
demolished similar structures in the area.

In May, Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah condemned Israel’s 
illegal practice of destroying Palestinian water infrastructure as 
"atrocious." <http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=771655>

“Israel uses every means possible to chase Palestinians away from their 
ancestral land,” Hamdallah said at the time. "Water is life, and if you 
don't have water you cannot exist."

While Palestinians are routinely subject to demolitions and land 
seizures in the West Bank, they are also subject to disproportionately 
low access to vital resources. Israeli settlers in the occupied 
Palestinian territory consume approximately six times the amount of 
water used by Palestinians; this discrepancy is even greater when 
considering water used for agricultural purposes.

The Sair official said that Israeli forces had demolished eight homes 
<http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=772699> in the Jurat al-Kheil 
area a month and a half earlier, leaving some 50 Palestinians homeless. 
Israel rarely grants Palestinians permits to build in the West Bank, 
including East Jerusalem, although the estimated 550,000 Jewish Israeli 
settlers are more easily given building permits and allowed to expand 
their homes and properties.

Nearly all Palestinian applications for building permits in Area C are 
denied by the Israeli authorities, forcing communities to build 
illegally.Demolitions in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem have 
seen an unprecedented surge in recent months, as Israeli authorities 
demolished 769 Palestinian structures so far this year, in a large 
increase from 531 in all of 2015, according to UN documentation.
-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20160927/6a21199f/attachment.htm>