Israeli military excavators demolished on Monday most of a Palestinian Beduine village in the West Bank, territory occupied by Israel, destroying the village infrastructure and leaving residents wandering between the rubble of their homes.
The excavators entered Khalet Al-Dab in the morning, knocking down most of the village structures, Basel Adra, filmmaker, journalist and activist in the area said.
Nine houses, five tents and five pens for animals were demolished, said Mohammed Rabia, head of the village council in the area.
The COGAT, the Israeli military agency responsible for administrative affairs in the West Bank, said it demolished the buildings because they were illegally built in an area designated as a closed shooting area.
The Palestinians say that obtaining Israeli permission to build in the West Bank is almost impossible.
Ali Dababsa, 87, a pastor who observed how forces demolished his home, looked stunned. “We want to die under this land, this land is beautiful for us and we are the owners of this land,” he said, while he and other villagers gathered at the top of a hill.
The demolitions took place in an area of the West Bank known as Masafer Yatta, where radical Israeli settlers are expanding a network of settlements in the area. The Palestinians say that the settlers operate with the tacit consent of the Israeli state, which carries out demolitions of homes and rarely processs the settlers for cases of violence against the Palestinians.
Adra, who co -directed the Oscar -winning documentary “No Other Land”, on the Palestinian expulsion and the violence of the settlers in the area, said: “Since October 7, the Israeli army along with the settlers established three illegal settlements around this community and are now erasing this village to create more and more Israeli illegal settlements in the area.”
Destruction occurs while Israeli forces prepare to demolish more than 100 homes in two fields of refugees from the North in the West Bank.
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This story was translated from English by an AP editor with the help of a generative artificial intelligence tool.
