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A bulldozer is seen next to a new housing construction site in the Israeli settlement of Har Homa (background) in east Jerusalem on March 19, 2014 (AFP/Ahmad Gharabli, File) Published by Maan News
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BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) -- Israeli forces on Wednesday razed lands in the northern occupied West Bank district of Jenin as well as the southern West Bank district of Hebron, according to official Palestinian Authority (PA)-owned Wafa news agency.

Wafa reported that Israeli forces raided the Jenin-area village of Thahr al-Malehto and razed nearly 50 dunums (12 acres) of land, consisting of dozens of olive trees, allegedly in order to build a section of Israel’s separation wall around the illegal Israeli settlement of Shaked.

Wafa said that Palestinian residents of the village have been “left with no road to lead to their lands from the northern side of the village,” adding that once the sections of the wall is completed, it will “eat up” more than 1000 dunums (247 acres) of lands belonging to residents from Jenin-area towns such as Yaabad and Nazlat al-Sheikh Zaid.

Meanwhile in Hebron, Israeli bulldozers reportedly razed six dunums (1.5 acres) of agricultural lands in the village of al-Baqaa in the eastern Hebron district.

The lands are reportedly located near a road that leads to the Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba.

Israel’s separation wall, expected to reach 708 kilometers upon its completion -- 88 percent of which is planned inside occupied Palestinian territory, is a common sight in the occupied West Bank, where Israeli-installed cement walls and barrier fences zig zag throughout the landscape.

Israeli leaders often claim that the wall serves a security purpose to deter potential Palestinian attacks on Israelis. However, many activists, academics, and analysts have said that the wall is instead a massive “land grab” of large tracts of the Palestinian territory, and a strategy to consolidate Israel’s sovereignty over Area C -- the more than 60 percent of the occupied West Bank under full Israeli control -- where all of Israel’s illegal settlements are built or are in the process of being constructed.

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