Alwaght- Israeli regime has forced a Palestinian to demolish his own home in the occupied al-Quds (Jerusalem), after the Israeli municipality issued a demolition an order against it under the pretext of lacking the necessary construction permits.
Palestine’s Wafa news agency, citing local sources, reported that Israeli authorities left Mohammad Amira with no choice but to totally knock down his own home in the Wadi al-Hummus neighborhood of Sur Baher village in East al-Quds on Sunday.
Hasan Burajiya, a spokesman for the anti-settlement commission of the Palestinian Authority told Wafa that the Palestinian resident had to begin demolishing his house with his own hands to avoid paying unreasonable demolition costs to the Israeli municipality.
In July 2019, Israeli authorities demolished 77 Palestinian-owned houses in Wadi Al-Hummus, claiming that they have been built too close to the controversial separation barrier, a wall that the Israeli regime has been building since 2000 under the pretext of keeping out the Palestinians who are regularly protesting the regime’s occupation and aggression, which runs through Sur Baher village.
Israel routinely demolishes Palestinian houses in the occupied West Bank and East al-Quds, claiming that the structures have been built without the so-called permits, which are almost impossible to obtain. They also sometimes order Palestinian owners to demolish their own houses or pay the costs of the demolition if they do not.
Almost 75 percent of applications for a permit by Palestinian residents of al-Quds are rejected by the Israeli municipality, according to rights groups.
Moreover, the Tel Aviv regime plans to force out Palestinian families from different neighborhoods in East al-Quds in an attempt to replace them with settlers.
More than 600,000 Israelis live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East al-Quds.
All Israeli settlements are illegal under international law. The UN Security Council has condemned Israel’s settlement activities in the occupied territories in several resolutions.
Israel orders Palestinian families in Jordan Valley to leave homes
In a separate development, Israeli authorities ordered a number of Palestinian families in the northern occupied Jordan Valley to leave their homes for 10 days to make way for Israeli military training in the region.
WAFA, citing witnesses, said Israeli forces handed notices to a number of families in the village of Ibzeq, located near the northeastern West Bank city of Tubas, ordering them to leave their homes by Sunday, which means that they will remain outdoors in the extreme winter conditions or they have to find alternative accommodation elsewhere until the end of the drills.
Palestinians living in Jordan Valley regularly face evacuations due to Israel’s military exercises in the region. Much of the valley is fully controlled by the Israeli military.
In the fertile Jordan Valley, which makes up about 30 percent of area in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian residents outnumber Israeli settlers to a great extent.
Israel considers the region crucial to its ‘security’ and seeks to annex it in open defiance of international law.
Since 1967, when Israel occupied the West Bank, the Tel Aviv regime has sent thousands of settlers to Jordan Valley. Some of the settlements in which they live were built almost entirely on private Palestinian land.
Back in March 2019, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) reported that Israel had occupied more than 85 percent – or 27,000 square kilometers – of historical territories of Palestine in an expropriation process. According to the report, Palestinians now live on, and own, only 15 percent of their ancestral land.
