WEST BANK (Dispatches) – Zionist troops demolished an entire area housing a Palestinian Bedouin community near the city of Ramallah, in the central occupied West Bank, on Wednesday morning.
Zionist troops, accompanied by a crane and army vehicles, stormed the community of al-Qaboun and demolished 11 structures - including tents, tin houses and sheep pens - and confiscated tractors, water tanks and solar energy units.
Palestinian activist Fares Kaabneh told official Palestinian Authority (PA) news agency Wafa that Zionist troops also confiscated the debris of the demolished tents and tin homes, in order to prevent the Palestinians from rebuilding their community again.
The demolished structures belonged to 11 Palestinian families in al-Qaboun, located near al-Mughayyir, a village northeast of Ramallah close to the eastern slopes of the Jordan Valley.
There are almost 150 Palestinians from 30 families living in the Al-Qaboun Bedouin community. Located in Area C - the more than 60 percent of the West Bank under full Zionist control, where Palestinian construction is largely banned - the residents of al-Qaboun are under perpetual threat of home demolitions.
The occupying regime is seeking to pave the way for its settlement expansion by carrying out the demolitions in the Bedouin communities north and east of Ramallah.
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry has condemned the move. It the occupying regime plans to “judaize and Israelize” Al-Quds and the area C, and to evict the original residents and seize the Palestinian land for the expansion.
The area C accounts for more than 60 percent of the area in the West Bank, and forms a significant part of a future Palestine state under the so-called two-state solution.
Also on Wednesday, Zionist settlers opened fire at a Palestinian man near the village of Madma, south of the city of Nablus. WAFA said Mamoun Nassar, 49, was injured while he was herding sheep.
More than 600,000 Zionists live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East Al-Quds.
The settlements are illegal under international law as they are built on occupied land.