The Israeli troops detained early on Sunday two Palestinian residents from the West Bank city of Bethlehem as military bulldozers damaged a house and a garage in the city.

Eyewitnesses reproted that an Israeli military force surrounded the house of Mahmoud Dwaik from Bethlehem inthe early hours of the morning and threw a number of concussion grenades into the house forcing everyone out.

Troops insisted that unknown people are still inside the house and forced the owner of the house to call through a mega phone for those who are allegedly inside the house to come out, sealing off the area completely.

Troops then occupied a neighboring building that belongs to Salhab family and forced all the family in the lower floor and fired a number of concussion grenades and opened fire at the building. 

A military bulldozer then knocked down a parking grage that belongs to Dwaik family and fired a numebr rockets into the house causing serious damage to the walls and windows, however no casualties were reported.

Troops then deployed heavily in the vicinity of the house, allegdely looking for claimed wanted people but failed to find anyone in the house.

At around 10:30 am, troops pulled out from the area leaving devastating damage in the property, after blocking the traffic for more than 5 hours.

Meanwhile, local sources said that a contingent of the Israeli army swept into the Alkhader town south of Bethelahem and soldiers ransacked several Palestinian homes, before detaining tow residents, Mamhmoud Ghnaim and Younis Issa, 18.

  

  

According to the Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem, ARIJ, several Israeli religious groups have put out a call for a takeover of Palestinian land in Beit Sahour, in honor of the Jewish holiday 'Sukkot' on Thursday October 16th. The site in question is known as Ush Ghurab to the Palestinian population, while the Israelis call the spot Shdema.

The two groups Women in Green (Women For Israel's Tomorrow ) and the Committee for a Jewish Shdema made the call for a land takeover in honor of Sukkot. Sukkot is the holiday in which Jewish people make small shelters of sticks in remembrance of their legend that the Jewish people spent 40 years wandering in the desert in ancient times.

Beit Sahour is a town next to Bethlehem, in the southern West Bank, which became famous in the late 1980s for its nonviolent resistance to the Israeli occupation. Recently, the Israeli military abandoned a military base it had maintained in the town, and the land was reclaimed by Palestinian townspeople to turn into a park and community area.

According to the ARIJ report, the site was used by several administrations before it was occupied by the Israeli army in 1967 as a headquarters for the British Mandate troops and later on by the Jordanian Forces. However, the area that defines the Israeli military base today is much larger than it was before 1967. Israeli forces have confiscated more Palestinian lands throughout the years of occupation to increase the area of the military base. In 2006, they abandoned the military base. But Israeli settlers have made repeated attempts to take over the land, including beating and violently assaulting Palestinian residents of Beit Sahour.

Israeli soldiers dispersed international, Israeli and Palestinian activists who assembled in a protest against the wall in the village of Al-Ma’sara near Bethlehem on Friday afternoon.

The protest started after the Friday noon prayer in the village and headed towards the construction site of the wall.

However, Israeli troops halted them and prevented them from continuing towards the wall, and showered them with tear gas and concussion grenades. No injuries were reported.

The villagers of Al-Ma’sara and the neighboring villages have been organizing weekly protests in the past two years in bid to stop the construction of the wall on their land, which is the main source of income for most of the villagers.

The Israeli Authorities renewed administrative detention orders on Sunday against two underage female detainees from Bethlehem. The two detainees received three more months of detention without any formal charges or trials.

The two detainees were identified as Salwa Riziq Salah, 17, and Sara Yasser Saleh, 17.

The Palestinian Prisoners Society (PPS) reported that Salwa and Sara were kidnapped by the army on June 5, 2008 and were immediately moved to administrative detention.

The PPS slammed the Israeli violations and the continued detention of female detainees as more than 80 female detainees are still imprisoned by Israel. Some of them are mothers, others are children and a number of them are sentenced to high terms.

The PPS called on the international community to intervene and release all detainees from Israeli prisons as more than 10,000 Palestinians are still imprisoned by Israel.