The struggle against Jerusalem’s quiet ethnic
cleansing
Palestinians Face Home Demolitions
Spree By
Israel
By
Jonathan Cook
02/08/08 "ICH"
---- In the
first hours of dawn, Nader Elayan was woken by a
call from a neighbour warning him to hurry to the
house he had almost finished building. By the time
he arrived, it was too late: a bulldozer was tearing
down the walls. More than 100 Israeli security
guards held back local residents.
The
demolition, carried out four years ago, has left Mr
Elayan, his wife, Fidaa, who is now pregnant, and
their two young children with nowhere to live but a
single room in his brother’s cramped home. It is the
only land he owns and he had invested all his
savings in building the now destroyed house.
Over
the past few years, the Elayans’ fate has been
shared by two dozen other families in the
Palestinian village of Anata, on the outskirts of
East Jerusalem. Hundreds more families have
demolition orders hanging over their homes. “Not one
person in my neighbourhood has a [building] permit,”
Mr Elayan, 37, said.
The
problem of house demolitions affects Palestinians
throughout the occupied territories. But according
to Hatem Abdelkader, an adviser to Salam Fayyad, the
Palestinian prime minister, the situation is
particularly acute in the East Jerusalem area.
He
noted that Israel’s policy of refusing building
permits to many of the 250,000 Palestinians in East
Jerusalem has resulted in the classification of
20,000 city homes as illegal since the occupation
began in 1967. Last year alone, the Jerusalem
municipality issued more than 1,000 demolition
orders for “illegal dwellings”. It is believed that
three out of every four Palestinian homes in the
city are now built without a permit.
“Illegal building is simply a pretext for destroying
Palestinian families’ homes and lives,” said Jeff
Halper, head of the Israeli Committee Against House
Demolitions (ICAHD).
“The
demolitions are part of a policy to stop the natural
expansion of Palestinian communities in and around
Jerusalem, freeing up the maximum amount of land for
use by Israeli settlers,” Mr Halper said. “The
demolitions increase the pressure on Palestinians to
move into the West Bank, so that they will lose
their residency rights in the city.”
In an
act of defiance, Mr Halper’s organisation and 40
international volunteers helped the Elayans to
rebuild their home this week in an attempt to
highlight what the committee calls the “quiet ethnic
cleansing” of East Jerusalem. The work was carried
out during a two-week summer camp funded by the
Spanish government. Madrid also paid for 18 Spanish
volunteers to participate.
“This
is the first time a government has supported the
rebuilding of an ‘illegal’ Palestinian home
demolished by the Israeli authorities,” Mr Halper
said.
The
issue of house demolitions is back in the spotlight
now after two separate incidents in July in which
Palestinians, both of whom were residents of
Jerusalem, rampaged through the city in bulldozers,
killing three Israelis and injuring many more.
Although the two Palestinians were shot dead at the
scene, Israeli officials, including Ehud Barak, the
defence minister, are calling for their homes to be
destroyed, making their families homeless, to deter
others from following in their path.
Such
punitive destruction of homes was stopped in 2005,
under the threat of legal challenge, but not before
some 270 homes were razed on security grounds in the
first years of the intifada.
According to Mr Halper, however, the use of
demolitions against Palestinians accused of illegal
building is a far more significant problem. “We
estimate that there have been at least 18,000 homes
destroyed during the four decades of occupation.”
In
fact, Mr Halper said, he believes the true number of
demolitions is likely to be double the official
figure. Many razings are unrecorded, carried out by
Palestinians themselves fearing a heavy fine if the
Israeli army enforces the demolition order.
“Most
demolitions are of multi-storey buildings that are
home to several families, meaning that well in
excess of 100,000 Palestinians may have been made
homeless by Israeli administrative policies,” he
said.
Since
its founding a decade ago, the Israeli Committee
Against House Demolitions has rebuilt 150
Palestinian homes as part of its campaign to bring
the issue of demolitions to the attention of Israeli
Jews and the international community. It has been an
uphill struggle, Mr Halper said. The European Union,
which recently upgraded its relations with Israel,
announced this month that it was withdrawing ICAHD’s
funding.
But
this year’s work camp may make the continuing
demolition of homes in Anata a little harder, Mr
Halper said. “It’s one thing to destroy a home
supposedly built illegally by a Palestinian, but
another to destroy one built with money provided by
the Spanish government.”
Mr
Halper also believes that, by exposing such groups
as the summer camp volunteers to the Palestinians’
plight, public perceptions may begin to change.
Alonso
Santos, a 21-year-old architecture student from
Madrid, said he learnt much from seeing at close
hand Palestinian life under occupation.
“It
was an eye-opener to realise that the principles of
urban planning we are taught at the university are
being used by the Israelis, but for exactly the
opposite purpose from the one usually intended. The
planning rules here are designed not to improve the
Palestinians’ lives but to make them more
miserable.”
The
volunteers were hosted at a peace centre in Anata
erected on the site of Salim Shawamreh’s home, which
was demolished four times by Israeli authorities.
Known as Arabiya House, after Mr Shawamreh’s wife,
the building is decorated on one side with a mural
depicting the death of Rachel Corrie, a US peace
activist, by an Israeli bulldozer that had been
demolishing homes in Gaza.
“Imagine your children leaving in the morning for
school and returning later in the day to find their
home, their whole world, has disappeared while they
were gone,” Mr Shawamreh said. “It’s happened to my
children four times. It’s cruelty beyond words.”
Mr
Shawamreh, whose family were refugees from the
northern Negev in 1948, said he and ICAHD
established the peace centre to highlight the plight
of the Palestinians in Anata. Today the house is
overlooked by an Israeli police station across the
valley, part of the advance growth of a large Jewish
settlement, Maale Adumum, that Palestinians and
Israeli human rights groups believe is cutting the
West Bank in two.
The
peace centre is also close both to the snaking route
of Israel’s separation wall and to a new bypass road
– part of what critics call an apartheid road system
– being built to ensure that Jewish settlers can
drive separately from Palestinians across the West
Bank.
Arabiya House is under a temporary reprieve from
demolition while Israeli courts determine its
status.
Mr
Halper said the judges have been reluctant to
confirm the destruction order because his group has
threatened to take the case to the International
Court of Justice if the ruling goes against it.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in
Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and
the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan
to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and
“Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in
Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is
www.jkcook.net.
