Israeli forces recently demolished a residential building in the Wadi Qaddum neighborhood in the town of Silwan, south of occupied Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, displacing all its residents. The occupation forces demolished the building, which housed 50 people from the al-Husseini family, under the pretext of not having a permit.
Last March, municipal crews and demolition machinery protected by at least two dozen police members arrived at the homes of the Tota’ah family in the Wadi el-Joz neighborhood of East Jerusalem. They demolished their three homes, displacing 18 family members. The ruined homes stood in the valley between Jerusalem’s Old City and the Mount of Olives.
Earlier, Israeli police accompanying a bulldozer barged their way into the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Jabal al-Mukabber and cordoned off the 140-square-meter family house of Adham Bashir before the heavy machinery knocked it down, reducing it to rubble.
That also happened to Rateb Mater, a 50-year-old Palestinian who saw the house demolition where he had lived with 10 family members in Jabal Mukaber for years.
Israeli forces have routinely demolished Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem under the pretext of “building without a permit,” which is nearly “impossible” to obtain.
The Israeli practice of demolishing homes, basic infrastructure and sources of livelihoods continues to devastate Palestinian families and communities in East Jerusalem and the 60% of the West Bank controlled by Israel, known as Area C.
Israeli planning and zoning laws were, from the onset, designed to prevent Palestinian urban development through elaborate legal arrangements, including lengthy, costly and complex building permit procedures and several building prohibitions based on land designations as "green areas" or "national parks" to limit as much as possible Palestinian construction, with the result that only 13% of East Jerusalem land is zoned for construction, and only just 1% of Area C while in both cases these areas are already heavily built up.
Ultimately, the number of permits granted to Palestinians yearly falls far below the demand. More than 94% of all Palestinian permit applications have been rejected in recent years.
At least one-third of all Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem lack a building permit, placing around 100,000 Palestinians at risk of forced displacement.
Israel militarily occupied East Jerusalem in 1967 and illegally annexed the city's eastern half in 1980.
Approximately 200,000 Israelis live in illegal settlements in East Jerusalem, many built on private Palestinian land and live in Palestinian homes taken over by settlers with the help of the state.
Demolitions of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem have risen sharply under Israel’s new hard-line, right-wing government under the leadership of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, sworn in late last December.
During the first quarter of 2023, 95 structures were demolished and 149 persons were displaced in East Jerusalem, including 88 children.
During the first quarter of 2022, 52 structures were demolished and 98 persons were displaced, including 50 children. The first quarter of 2023 in East Jerusalem, compared to the first quarter of 2022, saw a 55% increase in demolitions, a 66% increase in displaced persons, and a 56% increase in displaced children.
Palestinians in East Jerusalem are not granted the construction permits needed for natural growth and development, and when they build without permits, they open themselves to demolition.
Lack of zoning plans (which leads to an inability to obtain permits, meaning unauthorized construction and subsequent demolitions) is an intentional policy to further the demographic aims of Israeli decision-making since the annexation of East Jerusalem.
According to the Jerusalem Municipality’s “2020 Plan,” a meager 12% of the East Jerusalem land is allocated to Palestinian construction, while 42% is allocated to settlement construction.
Overall, no less than 20,000 structures in East Jerusalem have demolition orders, but the exact number is impossible to ascertain because demolition orders are often challenged and are either upheld or frozen in court before implementation.
As an example, in Silwan, 60% of the structures have demolition orders to make way for a settlement and an archaeological park, but the community is challenging it through 6,000 court cases where the outcome is unlikely to be in favor of Palestinians.
In 2019, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned that more than 100,000 Palestinians in East Jerusalem risked being displaced, adding that the “restrictive” planning regime made it “virtually impossible” for Palestinians to obtain permits.
Jerusalem has been the core target of Israel’s demographic engineering design aimed at entrenching its colonial domination over the Palestinian people as a whole, with the official intention of reaching a 70 to 30 ratio of Jewish Israelis to Palestinians within the city, as per the Jerusalem 2020 Master Plan.
On the other hand, East Jerusalem demolitions, and the discriminatory restrictive planning regime, are elements of a coercive environment created by Israeli policies meant to pressure Palestinians out of the city.
East Jerusalem demolitions in 2022 compared to the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories show that 959 structures were demolished and 1,021 persons, including 500 children, were displaced in the territories during 2022, out of which 246 structures were in East Jerusalem and whereby 411 persons were displaced including 203 children.
Overall, in 2022, East Jerusalem amounted to 25% of the demolitions and 40% of the displacement.
Moreover, East Jerusalem children amounted to 40% of the displacement in the occupied Palestinian territories.
A total of 140 donor-funded structures were demolished in the occupied Palestinian territories; 13 were in East Jerusalem and amounted to 9% of the demolitions.
Palestinians in East Jerusalem, a part of the internationally recognized Palestinian territory that has been subject to Israeli military occupation since 1967, are denied their citizenship rights and are instead classified only as “residents” whose permits can be revoked if they move away from the city for more than a few years.
They are also discriminated against in all aspects of life, including housing, employment and services, while house demolitions have been central tools to facilitate Israel’s land appropriation and dispossession.
Demographic pressure and the need for urban expansion, coupled with the Israeli authorities’ denial of 93% of overall building permits, have forced Palestinians to build their homes without permits. Between 30% and 50% of Palestinian houses in Jerusalem are estimated to have been built without permits.
Demolishing a house is not only destroying a physical structure, but it is also wiping out the memories of a home that symbolizes a person’s entire life and sense of identity and the humanitarian impact of home demolitions on families, children, neighbors and the community as a whole is immense.
Local and international NGOs and rights groups have long pointed to a range of Israeli practices and policies in Jerusalem aimed at altering the demographic ratio in favor of Jews.
Forcible displacement and transfer of a militarily occupied population violate international law and war crimes.
Israel has illegally annexed East Jerusalem and handles the demolitions as an internal administrative matter carried out by the municipality, but home demolitions are the outcome of extreme discrimination in Israeli urban planning laws against Palestinians.
Within the framework of its illegal de jure annexation, Israel has been justifying home demolitions under a law-enforcement narrative to hide what in reality constitutes flagrant breaches of international humanitarian law and international human rights law. Likewise, the increasing scale and magnitude of these demolitions amount to grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention against the destruction of personal property. They are done as a punitive collective punishment and may be prosecuted as war crimes.
*Palestinian author, researcher and freelance journalist; recipient of two prizes from the Palestinian Union of Writers
