Israel’s destruction and seizure of items provided by international donors, as humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people, have gone up by 150 percent since the beginning of this year, a United Nations agency said on Thursday.
In its bi-weekly report on the Protection of Civilians, covering the period between 18 and 31 October, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), in the occupied Palestinian territories, said that Israeli authorities demolished or confiscated 18 structures in six Palestinian communities of East Jerusalem and Area C, displacing 54 people, including 29 children and affecting the livelihoods of more than 46 others.
It also said, according to WAFA, that eight of the targeted structures, including residential shelters, latrines and a water cistern, had been provided as humanitarian assistance in response to previous demolitions.
“This brings the total number of assistance items destroyed or confiscated, since the beginning of 2016 to 273, up more than 150 percent compared to all of 2015,” said OCHA.
Palestinians are forced to build without permits in Jerusalem and the Israeli-controlled Area C, which amounts to more than 60 percent of the total area of the occupied West Bank, due to lack of Israeli-issued building permits in these areas.
In addition to the destruction of shelters, OCHA also cited the damage that Israeli forces, with the Israel Antiquities Authority, had done to a Muslim cemetery near the Old City district of Jerusalem, on grounds of it being used to erect gravestones without permits.
Israeli forces also conducted 196 search and arrest operations, detaining 234 Palestinians in the West Bank, it said.
The Jerusalem governorate accounted for the highest portion of detentions (97) and operations (56), including the raiding of a secondary boy’s school in annexed East Jerusalem.
Also in Jerusalem, the Israeli police banned 15 Palestinians from entering Al Aqsa Mosque for periods ranging between two weeks and three months.
(Edited for the IMEMC by chris @ imemc.org)
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