Report: 42 Israeli homesteads demolished in half a year

A special report published Thursday morning by Judea and Samaria farmers details the number of evictions and destructions carried out by the Civil Administration and Central Command in the past half year, as well as the use of closed military area orders to prevent the establishment of new ones.

According to the data, the number of evictions stands at no less than 44 events since the beginning of 2024, which is a frequency of twice a week. In most events, more than one structure is destroyed, and sometimes even five or ten in a single event.

The report's authors claim that the destruction carried out by the security forces during the specified time period include the demolition of residential homes, destruction of sheep pens and water and electricity infrastructure, uprooting of orchards, and confiscation of equipment.

Furthermore, according to them, in many cases, the security forces carried out repeated destruction, sometimes even 5 times in a row in a short period at a hill or farm, in an attempt to prevent the establishment of the farm at any cost.

Additionally, the IDF's Central Command chief issued closed military area orders in a series of cases to prevent the establishment of new farms.

"From the data in the past half year, a clear and worrying trend emerges," said the report's authors. "The Central Command chief and the Civil Administration promoted a policy in the field to prevent the establishment of new settlements and outposts. The policy began after the establishment of the Evyatar settlement but intensified over time."

According to them, "This is a much more severe policy than just occasional destruction in settlements, within which the security system invests massive resources to ensure that new Jewish settlements will not be established. If in the past we saw isolated destruction on a hill now and then, today it is already destruction within hours or a few days since the establishment of the farm, use of closed military zone orders, and repeated destruction to ensure that the hill cannot establish itself."

"Recently, the security system has adopted a series of false justifications for the drastic increase in destruction, including the claim that the Jewish points pose a 'security risk' and thus must be evacuated. Everyone with common sense knows that settlement brings security and not the other way around, and the purpose of the policy is one: to abandon the area to the PA, which operates within the framework of the Fayyad plan to create Arab territorial continuity for the establishment of a de facto Palestinian state. We hope that the new chief and the political echelon will be wise enough to change the existing policy and bring about a breakthrough in settlement that will determine the fate of the battle for Judea and Samaria."