Orders to stop work and construction in homes and a commercial establishment in the village of Marda, Salfit Governorate

• Violation: Notification to stop work and construction.
• Location: Marda Village / Salfit Governorate.
• Violation date: 01/06/2022.
• The aggressor: the so-called civil administration of the occupation.
• Affected side: 7 families from the village.

 Violation details:

On Wednesday morning (1/6/2022), the Israeli occupation army, accompanied by the so-called Department of Planning and Construction in the Civil Administration, raided the village of Marda, northeast of Salfit, and notified to stop work and construction in Palestinian citizens’ homes and commercial facilities, under the pretext of building without license.

In its notifications, the occupation authorities demanded to immediately stop construction work, under the pretext of starting it without a permit, and set the date (22/6/2022) As a date for the session of the Construction and Organization Committee of the Israeli Civil Administration, which is based in the settlement of Beit El. According to field follow-up, the notifications affected the following facilities:

The affected citizen	Number of the family members			Area in m²	The nature of the subdued building	Notification number	Photo
	Male	Female	Children
Majed Ali Ibrahim Ibdah	3	3	3	220	Two storey house under construction
Gad Samir Muhammad Ibdah	5	2	3	100	One store of zenko and iron corners
Talal Afif Khuffash	1	3	2	200	inhabited two storey house
Munther Ahmed Mohamed Ibdah	4	3	3	250	inhabited two storey house
Mahmoud Mohamed Ibdah	4	2	4	320	Two storey house under construction surrounded by a wall
Zahi Riad Al Khuffash	1	1	0	200	inhabited two storey house
Jihad Samir Muhammad Ibdah	3	1	2	150	One-story house under construction		NA
Total	21	15	17	1440

For his part, Mr. Nisfat al-Khuffash, head of Marda Village Council, confirmed to the field researcher that there are three houses within the alert that were built more than 15 years ago and are inhabited, and that the occupation had previously notified other houses on (2/2/2022) in the same location. This indicates the extent of the Israeli targeting of the village, which suffers from a lack of space allocated for construction, which does not exceed 300 acres, this percentage does not meet the natural increase in the population.

 A glimpse on Marda village[1]

The village of Marda is located 5 km to the north-east of the city of Salfit, and it is bordered to the north by the village of Jamain, to the west by the village of Kafel Haris, to the east by the village of Yasuf, and to the south by the colony of “Ariel”. Its population was 2,375 people in accordance with 2017 Palestinian general census. The total area of ​​the village is 8,816 dunums, of which only 350 dunums are a built-up area.

About 2537 dunums of the village’s lands have been captured for the building and expansion of Ariel colony since 1978 whose total population nowadays mounts to  16053 settlers.

In addition, about 261 dunums of Mardsa village lands were, also, captured for the construction of the settlers’ bypass roads No. 505.

According to Oslo agreement, the lands of the village are classified as followed:

• Areas classified as B is 17% (about 1458 donums).
• Areas classified as C is 83% (about 7358 dunums).

[1] GIS-LRC