A UN envoy criticized Israel on Saturday for demolishing Palestinian homes in the occupied West Bank, calling the practice a violation of a six-month-old moratorium and a setback to peacemaking efforts.
Israel, which took the West Bank in a 1967 war, has often demolished dwellings built there without its permission. After a Palestinian revolt erupted in 2000, Israel also razed the homes of militants but abandoned the tactic five years later.
UN envoy Robert Serry said in a statement that Israel undertook in April to suspend demolitions but recently resumed them.
An Israeli official denied there had been any moratorium.
Serry’s statement deplored “the impact of these actions on some of the most vulnerable populations in the West Bank, with many poor families rendered destitute.”
The demolitions, Serry said, “send a discouraging signal regarding [Israel’s] support for the strenuous and concerted effort under way to improve conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory and build greater trust and confidence in support for the political process.”
Serry did not cite any specific demolition, but Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said at least some of the houses were built illegally on public land.
“The fact that the UN continues to ignore the specific circumstances of each case and prefers to express generalized criticism makes these statements very unhelpful,” Palmor said.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
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