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Notice posted on Yabad olive trees (image by Ma'an)

JERUSALEM (Ma'an) -- Israeli forces raided al-Issawiya village in East Jerusalem on Sunday, handing out demolition orders for several houses owned by Palestinians in the area, a local official said.

Mohammad Abu al-Homs, a member of village's follow-up committee, said that Israeli forces and members of the Jerusalem municipality staff raided several houses in al-Issawiya, taking photos of each.

During the raid, forces hung demolition orders on the walls of several houses, al-Homs said.

Reportedly among the Palestinians who received demolition orders was Hassan Abu al-Homs, who built his house several years ago for his seven-member family in the Zakaria Darwish neighborhood.

Many of the houses in this small neighborhood are also under threat of demolition by Israeli forces, al-Homs said.

Meanwhile, the municipality staff raided al-Ananiya Street near French Hill, an Israeli settlement in East Jerusalem.

The area is facing confiscation by Israeli authorities in order to build a landfill, al-Homs said.

Israel has destroyed more than 500 Palestinian properties in the West Bank and mostly East Jerusalem since the beginning of this year, displacing 862 people, according to UNOCHA.

Israel rarely grants Palestinians permits to build in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. It has demolished at least 27,000 Palestinian homes and structures since occupying the West Bank in 1967, according to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions.

The internationally recognized Palestinian territories of which the West Bank and East Jerusalem form a part have been occupied by the Israeli military since 1967.
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by Celine Hagbard - IMEMC News

The Israeli military has issued demolition orders for hundreds of Palestinian olive trees in the village of Yabad, in the northern West Bank, following threats that if kids kept throwing stones at soldiers, the army would destroy the village's olive trees.

The village is located west of Jenin, in the northern part of the West Bank, and depends largely on the annual olive harvest for its income.

According to local sources, the military placed notices in Hebrew and Arabic on trees throughout the main olive grove in town, saying that they will be uprooted by military order.

Over a million olive trees have been uprooted by the Israeli occupation forces since 2000, and the destruction continues to take place on a regular basis. The destruction of olive trees, both by Israeli soldiers and the Israeli military, is concentrated during the olive harvest season of October and November each year, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinian farmers head to their groves to harvest their olives for that year.

The mayor of the village of Yabad told the Ma'an News Agency that a few days before these military orders were issued, the soldiers had come into town and told the villagers that if kids in the town kept throwing stones at the soldiers when they invade the town, the army would come back and cut down all the olive trees in town.