On Sunday, illegal Israeli colonizers started bulldozing and digging Palestinian lands in Birin village, in Masafer Yatta, in the southern West Bank governorate of Hebron, in preparation for expanding an illegal colony.
The head of the Birin village council, Farid Burqan, said the colonizers conducted foundation work and digging to add a new building to the side of the building they built about a month earlier on about 400 meters of Palestinian lands.
Burqan added that the colonizers escalated their violations to illegally annex more Palestinian land to construct and expand their illegal colonies under the protection of the soldiers.
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 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.”
