Israeli occupation forces demolished an entire area where a Palestinian Bedouin community near the city of Ramallah lives, in the central occupied West Bank, on Wednesday, June 15th.
Israeli troops aided by cranes and vehicles stormed the community of al-Qaboun. They demolished 11 structures – including tents, tin houses, and sheep pens – and confiscated tools including large machinery like tractors, water tanks, and solar panels which are imperative to the sustainability of the lives of these communities.
Fares Kaabneh, a Palestinian activist told the official Palestinian Authority (PA) news agency Wafa that Israeli forces also confiscated the remains of the demolished tents and tin homes, in order to thwart the Palestinians from reconstructing their community again.
The Israeli occupation forces brought havoc to 11 structures belonging to 11 Palestinian families in al-Qaboun– out of a total of 30, located near al-Mughayyir, a village northeast of Ramallah close to the eastern slopes of the Jordan Valley.
There are almost 150 Palestinians living in the al-Qaboun Bedouin community. Located in Area C – which constitutes 61 percent of the West Bank under full Israeli security and civilian control, where Palestinian construction is largely banned making the residents of al-Qaboun are under perpetual threat of home demolitions.
As of July, Israel has demolished 291 Palestinian houses and 130 funded humanitarian structures in the West Bank since January, displacing 592 people – 320 of them children, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Israel has adopted a policy of demolitions of Palestinian structures in Area C, as it continues to build illegal settlements, which violates the international law and completely disregards the agreements in the solo accords that promised future sovereignty of a Palestinian state, a future the occupation made into a distant wish that isn’t in the horizon anytime soon.
