RESTRICTION SUMMARY: APAwire CLIENTS ONLY SHOTLIST: APAwire - APAwire CLIENTS ONLY, Hebron, 16 October 2021. Protesters confront Israeli soldiers during a demonstration by Palestinian land-owners against confiscation of lands by Israel in south south of the West Bank city of Hebron.

01- SOUNDBITE (in Arabic) Mohammad Khalil, one of the landowners in Al-Ataria area
02- SOUNDBITE (in Arabic) Fouad Al-Amour, Coordinator of the Protection and Resilience Committees in Masafer Yatta

STORYLINE:

Israel’s nation-state law, passed in July 2018, enshrines Jewish supremacy, and states that building and strengthening the colonial settlements is a “national interest.”

Israel demolishes Palestinian houses and structures almost on a daily basis as a means to achieve “demographic control” of the occupied territories.

Israel denies planning permits for Palestinians to build on their own land or to extend existing houses to accommodate natural growth, particularly in Jerusalem and Area C, which constitutes 60 percent of the occupied West Bank and falls under full Israeli military rule, forcing residents to build without obtaining rarely-granted permits to provide shelters for their families.

In contrast, Israel argues that building within existing colonial settlements is necessary to accommodate the “natural growth” of settlers. Therefore, it much more easily gives over 700,000 Jewish Israeli settlers there building permits and provides them with roads, electricity, water and sewage systems that remain inaccessible to many neighboring Palestinians.

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