JERUSALEM

Israeli authorities granted only 66 building permits to Palestinians in the occupied West Bank over an 11-year period, while illegal settlers were given 22,000 permits, an Israeli newspaper reported Sunday.

According to Haaretz daily, only 66 building permits were issued to Palestinians between 2009 and 2020, while 22,000 permits were granted to illegal Israeli settlers during the same period.

“As most of the West Bank is off-limits to Palestinian development, residents are forced to build without permits,” the paper commented.

It cited widespread demolitions carried out by the Israeli authorities since January in the Taawun neighborhood, south of Nablus in the northern West Bank.

The neighborhood is located in Area C and “did not receive building permits from the Israeli authorities, despite being far from any settlement or access road,” said the daily.

Al-Taawun, it added, is “just one example of the accelerating pace of demolitions across the West Bank.”

In January alone, the Israeli army demolished a total of 24 Palestinian buildings in Area C due to the lack of building permits.

Rising demolitions

Haaretz, citing the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said at least 2,461 Palestinian buildings were demolished over the past two years due to the lack of building permits, up from 4,984 structures over the previous nine years.

As a result, around 3,500 people lost their homes during that two-year period, it added.

OCHA did not specify whether the demolitions took place exclusively in Area C or across the West Bank as a whole.

According to Haaretz, the demolition campaign over the past two years has coincided with the displacement of around 80 Palestinian communities due to the rapid expansion of illegal settler farms and outposts.

The 1995 Oslo II Accord divided the West Bank into three administrative areas: Area A under full Palestinian control; Area B under Palestinian civil administration and Israeli security control; and Area C under full Israeli civil and security control, which covers about 61 percent of the West Bank.

Palestinians say Israel rarely grants building permits in Area C, effectively preventing construction or land development.

Palestinians view the measures as a prelude to the formal annexation of the West Bank and a step toward the de facto annexation of large parts of the territory, moves they say would undermine the two-state solution framework endorsed by the UN.

In a landmark opinion in July 2024, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory illegal and called for the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

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*Writing by Rania Abushamala in Istanbul.