File photo shows Israeli forces standing by as the regime's bulldozers tear down a Palestinian home.

United Nations, September 5 (RHC)-- The United Nations says the Israeli regime has demolished close to 9,000 Palestinian-owned structures since 2009, rendering thousands of Palestinians homeless.  The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) offered the grim data in a report, which was quoted by the Palestinian Information Center.

According to the report, the regime has laid waste to as many as 8,746 such buildings throughout the period. The demolitions have displaced some 13,000 Palestinians and inflicted losses on around 152,000 others, the UN report added.

As many as 1,559 of the buildings were either razed by the regime or their Palestinian owners, so they could avoid paying heavy fines exacted by the occupying entity.  In order to try to rationalize flattening of the Palestinian structures, the regime has been accusing their owners of lacking construction permit, obtaining which is next to impossible.

Critics say the demolitions are part of the apartheid regime’s policy of dispossession and ethnic cleansing.  The Tel Aviv regime regularly destroys the homes of Palestinians it blames for attacks on Israeli settlers, in an act of collective punishment condemned by human rights activists.

Thousands of Palestinians, in spite of the fact that they had done nothing wrong and were not suspected of any wrongdoing, have been displaced due to the regime’s cruel policy.  The regime occupied the Palestinian territory of the West Bank, including East al-Quds, which Palestinians want as the capital of their future state, in 1967.

Between 600,000 and 750,000 Israelis occupy over 250 illegal settlements that have been built across the territory ever since.

The structures are illegal under the international law that forbids construction on occupied territory.  The UN Security Council has, in several resolutions, condemned the Tel Aviv regime’s construction projects.