Israeli settlers Thursday evening broke into a number of the villagers’ houses of Birin, south of Hebron city, according to local sources.
Head of Birin Village Council, Farid Burqan, told WAFA that groups of settlers, under military protection, barged their way into the southern West Bank village before storming and ransacking a number of houses, spreading panic among the families, especially children.
The villagers gathered in a large group and forced the settlers out of their locality.
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.
According to the Land Research Center, Israel has frequently issued military 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.
Settler violence against Palestinians and their property is routine in the West Bank and is rarely prosecuted by Israeli authorities.
Settler violence includes property and mosque arsons, stone-throwing, uprooting of crops and olive trees, attacks on vulnerable homes, among others.
There are over 700,000 Israeli settlers living in colonial settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Source: Palestinian News & Information Agency