WEST BANK (Dispatches) – A Palestinian official says the Zionist regime’s authorities are preparing to build a new illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank, despite the international outcry against the regime’s land expropriation and settlement expansion policies in Palestinian territories.
Ghassan Qabha, mayor of the town of Barta’a, told the official Palestinian Wafa news agency that Zionist troops on Sunday evening placed several prefabricated homes in a mountainous area near a checkpoint behind the separation wall southwest of Jenin.
He added that the prefabs have been put in the area as part of the regime’s intention to establish a new settler outpost there.
About 600,000 Zionists live in over 230 illegal settlements built since the 1967 occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East Al-Quds.
Palestinians want the West Bank as part of a future independent Palestinian state, with East Al-Quds as its capital.
Separately, Zionist troops forced two Palestinian families to demolish their own houses in East Al-Quds.
The Wadi Hilweh Information Center (Silwanic) announced in a statement that Eqab Ja’abis, a resident of Jabel Mukaber neighborhood in southern East Al-Quds, was forced to tear down his own home after all efforts to reverse the demolition orders failed.
He had also paid hefty fines and fees while attempting to obtain permits for his house.
In another development in the occupied territories, a Palestinian commission for prisoners has urged the occupying regime to free a Palestinian inmate who is currently on hunger strike in jail in protest against his detention without charge at the hands of the Zionist regime.
The Palestinian Commission of Detainees’ and Ex-Detainees’ Affairs said in a statement on Sunday that it has submitted an appeal to the occupying regime’s so-called supreme court against the so-called administrative detention of 24-year old Palestinian prisoner Miqdad al-Qawasmi who is currently held in Ofer prison, and has been on hunger strike for 39 consecutive days in protest at his indefinite, unfair and unexplained imprisonment, Palestine’s Wafa news agency reported.
Qawasmi, who is a resident of the occupied West Bank city of Al-Khalil, was detained in January this year. He has previously spent a total of four years in the regime’s jails for resisting occupation of the Palestinian territories.