Illegal paramilitary Israeli colonizers demolished residential tents and livestock shelters belonging to Palestinian residents in Khirbet Hamsa, in the northern Jordan Valley of the occupied West Bank, on Friday.
Mo’taz Bisharat, a Palestinian official who oversees the Jordan Valley file in Tubas Governorate, stated that the colonizers brought bulldozers and razed the structures belonging to Yasser Mahmoud Abu Kabash and his son, Sanad.
Bisharat noted that this is the first time colonizers have used bulldozers to demolish tents and animal shelters directly.
The Israeli occupation had issued demolition orders for these structures nearly two years ago.
In a related development, colonizers began leveling and cultivating a plot of land near Ein as-Sakout, also in the northern Jordan Valley.
Mahdi Daraghma, head of the al-Maleh village council, confirmed that the land belongs to Palestinian residents and that the colonizers are preparing it for illegal seizure.
On Thursday, Israeli colonizers carried out a number of attacks, injuring a child and destroying olive trees, after targeting Palestinians and their property, in the occupied West Bank.
Furthermore, Israeli colonizers invaded the Bedouin community of Al-Hathrawa near Khan al-Ahmar, east of occupied Jerusalem in the West Bank, and demolished four mobile homes used by local families.
It is worth mentioning that, on Wednesday, Israeli occupation authorities issued two new tenders for the construction of a colonial neighborhood in the illegal colony of Adam (Givat Binyamin), built on stolen Palestinian land northeast of occupied Jerusalem.
All of Israel’s colonies in the occupied West Bank, including those in and around occupied East Jerusalem, are illegal under International Law, the Fourth Geneva Convention in addition to various United Nations and Security Council resolutions. They also constitute war crimes under International Law.
Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits collective punishment and acts of terror against civilian populations.
Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states: “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” It also prohibits the “individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory”.
Articles 53 and 147, prohibit the destruction of civilian property and classify pillage as a war crime.
