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Photo:
Illustrative scene. File. Published by Maan News
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HEBRON (Ma'an) -- The Israeli army ordered the halt of construction of a Palestinian-owned house and a water well in the southern West Bank district of Hebron, on Saturday.

Coordinator of a local committee against settlements and the separation wall in southern Hebron, Rateb Jbour, told the Palestinian Authority (PA)-owned Wafa News Agency that the Israeli army ordered members of the Shawahin and Nawaaja families near Yatta in southern Hebron to stop construction of a house and water well.

The stop-construction orders were reportedly under the pretext that the structures are being built with the difficult-to-obtain Israeli permits.

Israel rarely grants Palestinians permits to build in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem, although the estimated 550,000 Jewish Israeli settlers in the occupied Palestinian territory are more easily given building permits and allowed to expand their homes and properties.

Nearly all Palestinian applications for building permits in Area C are denied by the Israeli authorities, forcing communities to build illegally.

According to Palestinians and rights groups, Israel's overall goal, both in its policies in Area C and Israel's settlement enterprise, is to depopulate the land of its Palestinian residents and replace them with Jewish Israeli communities in order to manipulate population demographics in all of historic Palestine.