27 Facilities Torn Down in a Single Morning
Israeli forces demolished 27 commercial, industrial, and agricultural facilities in the Aaba area, northeast of Jenin, starting Wednesday morning, after entering the area with several military vehicles and bulldozers and closing off the roads leading to it. Aaba village council head Burhan Azmouti said Israeli forces began the demolitions in the early morning hours, citing unlicensed construction as justification, even though the land the facilities stand on is owned by its holders under official “Tabu” land registration deeds.
150 Families’ Livelihoods on the Line
Azmouti said the demolished facilities housed a range of commercial, industrial, and agricultural activities, and that the demolitions caused direct damage to the area’s economic activity, affecting the livelihoods of at least 150 families who depend on work at these facilities. He noted that Israeli forces had issued demolition notices roughly ten days earlier for around 40 facilities in the area, raising fears of further demolitions in the period ahead. Separate figures show Israeli authorities carried out 80 demolition operations across the West Bank in July alone, affecting 165 structures — including 80 inhabited homes, 8 uninhabited homes, 63 agricultural facilities, and 11 livelihood-related structures — concentrated mainly in Qalqilya (34 facilities), Hebron (26), Ramallah and al-Bireh (22), and Bethlehem (16), among other areas.
Part of a Broader Effort to Redraw Jenin’s Map
The demolitions come amid an escalating Israeli campaign targeting facilities and land across Jenin governorate, particularly in so-called “Area C,” where Israeli authorities impose strict building restrictions on Palestinians. According to Jenin’s settlement affairs official, Tareq Igbariya, the latest wave of 15 Israeli military orders seizing roughly 200 dunams of land in the governorate is not a temporary military necessity but part of an integrated project to re-engineer military and security control across the area — describing it as a creeping annexation and a geographic and demographic reengineering of the northern West Bank, achieved by controlling strategic areas, cutting Palestinian land into disconnected fragments, and isolating communities from one another.
Qabatiya’s mayor, Bilal Assaf, said the targeted land is not merely agricultural space but represents the town’s natural direction for expansion and its future reserve for urban growth, warning that losing control over it will limit the town’s ability to grow amid already-scarce space relative to population growth. Separately, the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission recorded 2,256 attacks carried out by Israeli forces and settlers throughout July alone — part of a broader pattern researchers describe as settlement expansion actively redrawing the geography of both Jenin and Jerusalem, reshaping movement, economic activity, and urban development across the northern West Bank for years to come.
