Ramallah, July 27 (RHC)-- The Israeli regime has torn down two houses belonging to two Palestinian prisoners, whom it has accused of killing an Israeli settler. The Israeli military’s bulldozers razed down the houses belonging to the inmates, Yusef Aasi and Yehya Miri, whom the regime claims killed the settler back in April, the Middle East Eye news and analysis website reported, citing Palestinian media outlets.
The structures are located in the village of Qarawat Bani Hasan in the northern part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The men, who are in their 20s, have been detained by the occupying regime since April 29 after carrying out, what the regime calls, a fatal shooting attack against “the Israeli security guard Vyacheslav Golev" at the entrance to the illegal settlement of Ariel.
Footage obtained from Twitter captured the moment when the forces bombed Yehya Miri’s house, turning the structure to dust.
Before razing the houses, Israeli military vehicles stormed the village and closed its entrances, imposing a security cordon on the neighborhoods in which the residential buildings were located.
“Residents of a number of adjacent homes were forced to evacuate as snipers were deployed on their roofs,” the MEE added. The Israeli rights group B’tselem slammed the practice as “collective punishment.”
Also on Tuesday, Israeli forces bulldozed a café in the north of the occupied territories, and flattened a home that was under construction in a village southwest of the city of Jenin.
Separately, it was reported that an Israeli panel based in al-Quds had advanced creation of a new Israeli-populated neighborhood in the holy occupied city, which bisects two Palestinian areas.
The so-called District Planning and Building Committee approved the project that breaks up contiguity between Sur Baher and Beit Safafa on Monday, The Times of Israel reported. The plans to build as many as 14,000 illegal settler units in the neighborhood that it intends to set up in an area known as the Lower Aqueduct located northwest of the city of Bethlehem. “The new neighborhood will…connect” the Israeli neighborhoods of Givat Hamatos and Har Homa in East al-Quds.
The Israeli regime occupied the Palestinian territory of the West Bank, including East al-Quds, in a heavily-Western-backed war in 1967. Ever since, it has dotted the territory with hundreds of illegal settlements that have come to house hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers.
Palestinians want the West Bank as part of a future independent state with East al-Quds as its capital. The Israeli regime, however, lays claim to the entire city as its so-called “capital.”
“Since 1967, not even one new neighborhood has been planned for Palestinians [in East al-Quds], whereas 12 have been established for Israelis,” said Hagit Ofran, a staffer with the anti-settlement group Peace Now, reflecting on the Monday development.
Throughout these years, the Israeli regime has initiated and planned roughly 57,000 illegal settler units for Israelis in East al-Quds, he added, noting, “For the Palestinians, [however] it initiated plans for just 600 homes.”
Apart from cutting off the Palestinian areas from each other, the new Israeli neighborhood would usurp the last remaining plot of land on which Beit Safafa could develop, Ofran also lamented.
