UN: Israel killed at least 31 Palestinians, razed scores of Palestinian structures in 3 weeks
The UN says the Israeli regime has killed dozens of Palestinians and either destroyed or confiscated scores of Palestinian-owned structures across the occupied West Bank within an interval of about three weeks in January.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Palestine offered the grim data in its biweekly Protection of Civilians report that covered the period between January 10 and 30, the official Palestinian Wafa news agency reported on Saturday.
According to the report, the fatalities included as many as 10 Palestinians who were killed during a January 26 raid by Israeli forces on the city of Jenin and its adjacent refugee camp in northern West Bank. The death toll, which included two children and one woman, was the highest to be caused in a single Israeli operation since 2005, when OCHA began keeping a record of Palestinian casualties.
Overall, 441 Palestinians, including 49 children, were injured by Israeli troops throughout that period, the report noted, adding that 74 (18 percent) of those injured were targeted with Israeli forces’ live fire.
Israeli settlers also injured 18 Palestinians, including at least one child, in nine incidents, and caused damage to Palestinians’ properties in another 42 instances.
During the same period, Israeli authorities demolished, forced owners to demolish or confiscated 88 Palestinian-owned structures throughout the occupied territory.
The structures, which included 21 homes, were targeted for lacking Israeli-issued building permits, which are almost impossible to obtain.
“As a result, 99 Palestinians, including 54 children, were displaced, and the livelihoods of more than 21,000 others were affected,” the report said.
Among the affected structures, 55 were located in West Bank’s so-called Area C, which is under full Israeli military control, and 26 were based in the occupied East al-Quds, including eight that were torn down by the owners themselves, so they would not have to fund destruction of their buildings by Israeli forces.
More than three million Palestinians live in the West Bank and East al-Quds, which have been occupied by the Israeli regime since 1967, when it waged a Western-backed war against Palestinians.
Ever since the occupation, Tel Aviv has built hundreds of illegal settlements across the West Bank, which have come to house hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers.
According to the latest figures, the population of Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank has surpassed half a million.
