ANATA, JERUSALEM // 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.
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