The Israeli police forces demolished two Palestinian houses and a commercial facility in Anata town northeast of Occupied Jerusalem.
Local sources affirmed that Israeli municipality bulldozers stormed the Baqa’an neighborhood in Anata and demolished local residential and commercial facilities.
A two-story house was among the demolished facilities the sources added.
The Israeli occupation has razed more 2000 houses in the holy city since its occupation in 1967.
Local NGOs and rights groups have long pointed to a range of Israeli practices and policies in Jerusalem aimed at altering the demographic ratio in favor of Jews a goal laid out as “maintaining a solid Jewish majority in the city”.
Unlawful settlement expansion Palestinian home demolitions and restrictions on urban development are some of the main ways being used to realize this goal according to rights groups.
East Jerusalem is illegally occupied under international law. The “extensive destruction and appropriation of property not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly” amounts to a grave breach of the 1949 Geneva Conventions and is considered a war crime according to the 1998 Rome Statute of the ICC.
