The United Nations called on Israel to immediately halt the destruction of Palestinian homes in the West Bank Friday after reporting a dramatic rise in demolitions in the past year. Israeli forces destroyed 622 Palestinian homes in the West Bank in 2011, “forcibly displacing” almost 1,100 people - over half of them children - according to a U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs report. “The current policy and practice of demolitions cause extensive human suffering and should end,” said Maxwell Gaylard, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territories. He said the demolition figures represent a “dramatic” increase from previous years and that tens of thousands of people remain under threat of dispossession, demolition, and displacement. Gaylard said he went to the village of Anata near Al-Quds Jerusalem on last Thursday where seven Palestinian homes were demolished this week. “He was informed that bulldozers and troops had arrived in the middle of the night of 23 January and that 52 people, including 29 children, had been forced from their homes, which were then completely destroyed,” said a U.N. statement.
