Israeli bulldozers Monday proceeded with razing Palestinian lands in Huwwara town, to the south of the occupied West Bank city of Nablus, for the construction of a settler-only bypass road, a local source said.
Ghassan Daghlas, who monitors settlement construction in the northern West Bank, told WAFA that the bulldozers proceeded with razing Palestinian land to the south of the town in preparation of opening a settler-only road in the area, damaging agricultural land.
The land leveling sparked confrontations, during which Israeli soldiers who fired gas and sounds bombs towards protestors.
The settler-only road under constructions starts from the nearby village of Zaatara, and passes through land owned by the towns of Huwwara, Beita and Odala.
The Israeli government issued the decision to open this 7-kilometer-long road in April 2019, whose establishment will lead to the seizure of about 406 dunums of land from seven villages to the south of Nablus.
Israel denies planning permits for Palestinians to build on their own land, extend existing houses to accommodate natural growth, and to build roads, particularly in Jerusalem and Area C, while it much more easily gives the estimated 550,000 Jewish Israeli settlers there building permits and provides them with roads, electricity, water and sewage systems that remain inaccessible to many neighboring Palestinians.
Israeli severely restricts Palestinians’ freedom of movement through a complex combination of approximately 100 fixed checkpoints, flying checkpoints, settler-only roads and various other physical obstructions.
Such Israeli measures, taken under the guise of security, are intended to entrench Israel’s 53-year-old military occupation of the West Bank and its settler colonial project which it enforces with routine and frequently deadly violence against Palestinians.
