AL KHALIL, (West Bank) Feb 2: The Israeli army on Sunday started the demolition of 22 Palestinian houses and stables, most of them still under construction, in Al Khalil, Israeli and Palestinian security officials said.

And in the northern West Bank, a 14-year-old Palestinian boy was injured by Israeli gunfire in clashes that erupted when youths pelted Israeli forces with stones and petrol bombs in the refugee camp of Jenin, residents said.

The clashes were sparked by an Israeli incursion into Jenin, the scene of frequent clashes since the army reoccupied almost the entire West Bank last June, as troops detained two wanted Palestinian militants.

One of them was identified as Mahmud Zafar, 35, a member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a splinter of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement. The other was Imad Abu Ihlal, 40, from the Palestinian security services.

In Al Khalil, army bulldozers started destroying the 22 houses which the administrators of the Israeli-controlled part of the flashpoint city said had been built without permission.

The destruction came as Israeli forces imposed a curfew on the city four days after launching Operation Hot Winter, a move aimed at cracking down on Palestinian militants who have killed more than 20 Israeli soldiers and settlers in recent months.

A spokeswoman for the Israeli administration said the owners of the houses had been given advance warning that the houses close to the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba were illegal.

She said only one of the houses under construction was already inhabited.

Saeb Erakat, Palestinian chief negotiator and local government minister, hit out angrily at the demolitions, calling them a “war crime” and a precursor to new settlement activity.

“Destroying this amount of houses is a war crime. It is a political act,” he told AFP. “They are trying to create a new reality on the ground to increase new settlement activity.”

It was not Israel’s business to get involved with building permits, he said.

It was an issue which should be dealt with by the Palestinian municipality of Al Khalil.

Erakat called on the Middle East quartet, which comprises representatives of the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia, to pressure Israel to stop new settlement activity while the Middle East roadmap was on hold.

Some of the homes were being built in an area where a settler was killed by two Palestinians in an illegal outpost which settlers set up.

After the attack the hardline settlers demanded that Palestinian houses in the sector be destroyed.

The destruction is the biggest demolition of private Palestinian buildings by the Israelis since January 21, when the army levelled 62 shops built without planning permission in Nazlat Issa, close to Tulkarem in the north.

Palestinian rights groups say that Israeli authorities have refused planning permission for new construction in zones of the West Bank under their civil administration, while allowing Jewish settlers to expand their own.—AFP