UN slams Israel for razing Palestinian Bedouins' homes in WB
The United Nations has condemned Israel’s “disregard for international law” after the destruction of a Bedouin community in the occupied West Bank displaced over 40 UN-registered refugees.
“The Israeli authorities have carried out a large scale demolition in the Bedouin refugee community at Anata in the occupied West Bank”, Chris Gunness, the spokesperson for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), said on Wednesday.
He noted that the latest destruction had displaced a total of 43 people, 25 of whom were children.
“It is heartbreaking to see such shocking disregard for international law and the impact it is having on an entire UN protected community,” he stressed.
Last month, the United Nations said Israel’s demolition campaign against Palestinian homes and structures across the occupied West Bank had increased four times compared to 2015, and left a record number of 808 Palestinians displaced since the start of 2016.
The UN announced in late April that a total of 588 Palestinian structures had been razed since January, adding that the demolitions had affected more than 1,000 people, who had lost structures related to their source of income.
Rights groups say the demolition of Palestinian homes is in line with Israel’s policy of expansion of illegal settlements and land expropriation.
The United Nations and most countries regard the Israeli settlements as illegal because the territories were captured by Israel in a war in 1967 and are hence subject to the Geneva Conventions, which forbid construction on occupied lands.
The presence and continued expansion of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine has created a major obstacle for the efforts to establish peace in the Middle East. Palestinians want the West Bank as part of their future independent state, with East al-Quds (Jerusalem) as its capital.
More than half a million Israelis live in over 230 illegal settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East al-Quds.
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