Israeli army bulldozers razed, early on Wednesday, some areas of Palestinian-owned farm lands in south of Nablus city, in the West Bank.
Palestinian chief for the file on illegal Israeli settlements in the northern West Bank, Ghassan Daghlas, said that Israeli army bulldozers began razing several dunams of Palestinian-owned farm lands in Burin village, near the Israeli colonial settlement of Yitzhar.
Daghlas pointed out that Israeli army levelling of Palestinian farm lands, mainly around Israeli colonial settlements, including Yitzhar, has recently increased.
According to B’Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories;
The settlements are the single most important factor in shaping life in the West Bank. Their destructive impact on the human rights of Palestinians extends far beyond the hundreds of thousands of dunams [1 dunam = 1,000 sq. meters], including farmland and grazing areas, that Israel appropriated from Palestinians in order to build them.
More land has been expropriated to pave hundreds of kilometers of roads for settler use only; roadblocks, checkpoints, and other measures that limit Palestinian movement only have been erected based on the location of settlements; Palestinian landowners have been effectively denied access to much of their farmland, both within settlements and outside them; and the winding route of the Separation Barrier, which severely violates the rights of Palestinians living near it, was established inside the West Bank in order to leave as many settlements as possible – and large tracts of land for expanding them – on the western side of the barrier.
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