Bulldozers tore down Palestinian businessman Riyad Mureish’s home in Hebron in the occupied West Bank on Friday, as Israeli officials launched a fresh crackdown on residents there. Mureish, 49, who put his life savings into the house, told NBC News that Israeli soldiers gave his family just minutes to collect their valuables and identity documents before ordering them out. He said the house had been subject to a long-running dispute with Israeli authorities, who retain significant power over construction permits in the area.
A court decree was in place that should have prevented any demolition, Mureish added, but the soldiers were unswayed by his pleas. Now sheltering in a small room at a neighbor’s house with his wife and children, Mureish says he is still struggling to comprehend what has happened. He said: “No house, no land, no money, what can I do?” Videos captured the moment that bulldozers began to rip through the property.
The scenes unfolded the same day that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood in another part of Hebron, wearing a military-style vest, and vowed to intensify operations across the occupied West Bank. After a shooting attack that left two Israeli soldiers and two gunmen dead, Netanyahu said the military would enter neighborhoods from which attackers had emerged, evacuate residents and go “house to house” to tackle any threat. IDF helmet cam shows gunfight with Palestinian gunmen “We are going to destroy terrorist infrastructure, and we are going to build the infrastructure for settlement,” he told cameras, speaking days before Israel’s pivotal Oct. 27 election that will decide whether he stays in power.
Israeli forces have since “sealed off all the entrances” to the city, “making it impossible for anyone to enter or leave,” according to Yousef al-Jabari, the Palestinian mayor of Hebron. He told NBC News a key mosque had been forced to close and residents in some areas were being removed from their homes, adding that soldiers have “effectively besieged an entire densely populated area and are demanding that its residents leave.” Hebron is the largest city in the West Bank, home to approximately 320,000 people. Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem said approximately 240 Palestinian families were forced from their homes in the Jildah and ‘Ein Deir Bahah neighborhoods of Hebron on Friday and Saturday.
Arrests and interrogations are also continuing,” the group said in a statement. Tensions have soared in the West Bank in the weeks before the Israeli election, with a spate of settler violence and military activity centered on the start of the olive harvesting season. Palestinians, activists and American journalists have been among those attacked and detained.
Al-Jabari called the latest lockdown a “form of collective punishment” and suggested Netanyahu’s intervention was motivated by politics. Netanyahu has long faced pressure from his far-right allies to embrace harder stances in the West Bank. In his comments Friday, he praised settlers as “heroic,” saying they were “an example to the people of Israel and to the state of Israel.” The leader, facing a tough re-election battle, has focused much of his campaign ahead of Tuesday’s vote on security.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
