PHOTO: AFP

Palestinian Saud al-Atrash prays as Israeli security forces demolish the family home and shops, citing the lack of a building permit in the village of Qilqes, a few kilometres from the Israeli settlement of Beit Hagai, just south of the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Hebron yesterday. Excluding east Jerusalem, which was occupied and annexed by Israel in 1967, some 500,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank, along with about three million Palestinian residents.