"On the morning of Thursday, July 31, Israeli military forces, accompanied by bulldozers, arrived at the site of one of the two propagation units of the Palestinian National Seed Bank in the West Bank city of Hebron. The bank, established in 2010, is dedicated to collecting, multiplying and preserving local plant seeds, with an emphasis on heirloom varieties of crops and plants of economic importance.
Seeds stored in the bank's units, in which research is also conducted, are grown seasonally, in cycles, with an aim of keeping them viable for future generations. Each year, the Palestinian bank provides free seeds to hundreds of agricultural workers, in an effort to encourage the preservation of the genetic diversity of some 80 traditional varieties.
The main propagation unit, south of Hebron, included four dunams (about an acre) of cultivated land – this time of year, the plots were overflowing with tomatoes, cucumbers, okra, gourds and other summer crops – as well as a 50-square-meter metal structure that included a control room and space for storing equipment.
But at 9 A.M. on that recent Thursday, according to Palestinian reports, Israeli Defense Forces soldiers arrived at the site, forcibly removed a Palestinian agricultural engineer from the premises and then used bulldozers to demolish the structure along with its contents: irrigation and monitoring systems, tools for cleaning and drying seeds and important documents relating to the agricultural research conducted there."
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-08-09/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/this-was-one-of-the-last-bridges-between-jews-and-arabs-israel-demolished-it-too/00000198-8d7b-d40a-a9d9-9fff6f590000
#Israel#Palestine#WestBank#Hebron#IDF#LandTheft#Colonialism
