HEBRON: Israeli occupation authorities today demolished a Palestinian house in the Birin village, east of Hebron, in the southern occupied West Bank, according to a local official.
Farid Burqan, Head of Birin Village Council, said that the occupation forces stormed Khirbet Khallet al-Farran, which forms a part of the village, and tore down a 200-square-meter house belonging to Hamzeh Zein, rendering Zein and his family homeless.
The occupation forces, Burqan added, also destroyed a water well, retaining walls and a fence, and razed a 1.5-dunum plot of land planted with fruit trees.
He pointed that assaults committed by the Israeli occupation forces in the village were intended to displace the indigenous Palestinians and make room for the expansion of the nearby colony of Bani Haiver.
The Villagers said that they continue to suffer incessant Israeli attacks despite that they possess title deeds for land ownership.
According to the Land Research Center, the occupation authorities have frequently issued mil
itary stop-construction and demolition orders against various residential and agricultural structures and dismantled barns in the locality, citing the lack of rarely-issued construction permits as a pretext.
In December 2017, Israel delivered stop-construction orders to the locality’s sole clinic and building intended to serve as a primary school for the community’s 60 children
In June 2019, as showed in a PLO’s Negotiations Affairs Department’s report, Israel seized 4,800 dunams of land from several localities, including Birin, for the expansion of Bani Haiver.
Located to the southwest of Bani Na’im, Birin has a population of 160 and is flanked by Bani Haiver colonial settlement from the east and the settler-only bypass Road No. 60 from the west. Its residents were originally expelled from Naqab in southern Israel and now depend on agriculture and livestock as their main source of livelihood.
Source: Palestine news & Information Agency – WAFA