Israel has razed more Palestinian homes and other structures so far this year than in all of 2015, the United Nations said yesterday, as the United States and France expressed concern.
Israeli authorities in the occupied West Bank and annexed east Jerusalem have demolished 726 structures this year, displacing 1,020 Palestinians, the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.
In the whole of 2015 there were 533 demolitions and 688 people displaced, OCHA said.
The structures included houses, shelters for livestock and installations such as solar panels.
Many were funded by foreign donors such as the European Union and its individual member states, which say they are working to meet urgent humanitarian needs of people under military occupation.
Israel says it forbids unlicensed construction, invoking treaties with the Palestinians that give it full control over 60 percent of the West Bank designated as “Area C” and asserting sovereignty over all of Jerusalem.
Between August 2 and 8, OCHA said, “in 14 separate incidents in Area C and east Jerusalem, the Israeli authorities destroyed, forced owners to destroy, or confiscated 42 structures for lack of building permits, displacing 30 people.”
Israeli NGO B’Tselem said that since the start of the year Israel razed at least 188 homes in the West Bank alone, “the highest number since B’Tselem began documenting home demolitions on grounds of ‘lack of building permits’ in 2006.”
France on Thursday condemned Israel’s destruction last week of structures it funded in the West Bank village of Nabi Samuel.
It was the third time this year that Israel has torn down French-financed structures, said a French foreign ministry statement, “which includes the dismantling of a school in February.”
“France is deeply concerned by the accelerated pace of demolitions and confiscations of humanitarian structures that should benefit the Palestinian population living in Area C,” it added.
“We call on the Israeli authorities to put an end to these practices which are contrary to international law.”
In Washington, the US State Department said it was worried about Israeli plans to raze the tiny Palestinian village of Susiya, in the southern West Bank.
“If the Israeli government proceeds with demolitions in Susiya, it would be very troubling and would have a very damaging impact on the lives of the Palestinians living there who have already been displaced on other occasions,” spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau told reporters.
The village has been torn down before and its homes are mainly tents, caves and makeshift structures, along with a children’s playground.
Israel says Susiya does not have a permit.
Separately, an Israeli NGO said yesterday that Israel is working to transplant an illegal West Bank settlement scheduled for demolition to Palestinian land nearby, effectively legalising the rogue outpost.
“They have started the process of taking land,” Hagit Ofran, of settlement watchdog Peace Now, said.
An advertisement bearing the crest of Israel’s civil administration, a unit of the defence ministry in the occupied West Bank, appeared in Palestinian daily Al Quds on Thursday listing several plots of land near the Amona settlement, north of Ramallah.
It said that they are considered to be the property of absentee Palestinian owners and therefore liable to seizure.
Anyone claiming legal ownership is invited to lodge objections within 30 days of the ad’s publication, it said.
“The civil administration has opened a process where it is announcing that it intends to make use of these properties which are near Amona,” Ofran said.
“It can be assumed that the takeover’s purpose is to allow the relocation of the settlers of Amona from the land they are currently occupying,” a Peace Now statement added.
The United States said late Thursday it was “deeply concerned” by the Israeli plan.
Meanwhile, Amnesty International urged Israel yesterday to either charge or release Bilal Kayed, a Palestinian on hunger strike for nearly two months in protest at his continued detention without trial.
“The Israeli authorities must release Kayed, or, if they have evidence that he has committed a crime, then he should be promptly charged with a recognisable criminal offence”, a statement from the rights group read.
Kayed, whose hunger strike entered its 59th day yesterday, was moved from prison to Barzilai hospital in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon after his health deteriorated.
He was currently refusing medical examinations and care and “is only consuming water, along with salts, sugar, and vitamin B1,” according to Addameer, a Palestinian rights group.
The Physicians for Human Rights NGO says his vision is failing, he has difficulty standing and that doctors have warned he could be at risk of a stroke.
Palestinian officials say he also has kidney problems.
Kayed was to have been released in June after serving a 14-and-a-half-year sentence for activities in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Instead, Israeli authorities ordered that he remain in custody until further notice.

Israeli forces fire at Palestinians
Israeli forces opened live fire at Palestinian farmers and shepherds in the eastern part of Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, Ma’an News Agency reported yesterday.
Witnesses told Ma’an that Israeli soldiers stationed in military towers in eastern Deir al-Balah opened live fire at Palestinian farmers and shepherd.
No injuries were reported.
On a near-daily basis, the Israeli army fires “warning shots” at Palestinian fishermen, farmers, and shepherds entering the Israeli-enforced “buffer zone” on land and sea, implemented after Israel imposed a blockade on the Gaza Strip nearly a decade ago.
Due to the high frequency of the attacks, live fire often goes unreported.

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