Ammon News - The Israeli army on Thursday began evacuating 35 Palestinian families living in the occupied northern Jordan Valley villages in the West Bank.

The head of the Wadi al-Maleh village council, Aref Daraghmeh, said in a statement that the Israeli bulldozers arrived at dawn and began evacuating families in preparation to demolish their homes, animal barns and other structures under the pretext that these areas are under military and security control.

Since 1967, Israeli occupation authorities had adopted a policy of house-demolition in Northern Jordan Valley villages.

Israel’s never-ending strategy aims at forcing hundreds of families to leave their homes in an attempt to empty the area of its Palestinian residents, who are mainly Bedouin, in order to build its illegal settlements.

Meanwhile, the Israeli occupation forces began Thursday morning to raze agricultural land in the village of Wadi Fukin, west of Bethlehem.

The head of the village council of Wadi Fukin, Ahmed Sukar, said in a statement that the occupation bulldozers began razing farmlands in Al-Qesmah village, adjacent to the 'Tzur Hadassah' settlement planted with olive and almond trees.

The village of Wadi Fukin is a subject of Israeli authorities’ aggression who deliberately pump the waste water coming out of the settlements into villagers’ agricultural fields. The Israeli authorities seek to seize vast areas of land to expand illegal settlements in the area.

*Petra