Days Of Palestine – Nablus

Israeli occupation forces on Monday seized a number of tents and uprooted trees in the area of Khirbet Tana, a small village to the east of Nablus, according to local sources.

Ghassan Daghlas, who monitors settlement activities in northern West Bank, told WAFA news agency that Israeli troops raided the area and declared it a closed military zone before proceeding to seize the tents and uproots the trees.

The village has been demolished multiple times by the Israeli authorities, as the Israeli Civil Administration does not recognize it as a village worth planning, therefore prohibiting construction there. The community is not connected to water or electricity and its residents use two local springs for water.

A community of some 250 Palestinians relying on animal husbandry and agriculture for their livelihood, Khirbet Tana has been left practically with almost no infrastructure.

According to the United Nations monitoring group OCHA, recent Israeli demolitions in the village “displaced ten families with 36 members, including 11 children, and affected the livelihoods of five additional families.”

The “Civil Administration” is the name Israel gives to the body administering its military occupation of the West Bank.

Soldiers in the oxymoronically named Civil Administration determine where Palestinians may live, where and when they may travel (including to other parts of the occupied territories like Gaza and East Jerusalem), whether they can build or expand homes on their own land, whether they own that land at all, whether an Israeli settler can takeover that land among others.