The Israeli municipality of West Jerusalem on Wednesday handed a Palestinian family an order to tear down its own home in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Jabal al-Mukabber, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.
WAFA correspondent said that Israeli municipality staff handed Ihab Husseini the demolition order, which says he has 21 days to complete the demolition of his home, otherwise the municipality would demolish it and force him to pay extremely high costs.
This Palestinian women cries while watching the self-demolition of her home in Jerusalem's Jabal Mukaber neighbourhood following a ruling by the Israeli occupation municipality.
12 people were displaced, including 8 children.
— Rachael Slow Cooker (@Rachael_Swindon) February 1, 2022
The Husseini house was built in 2017 and since then, the municipality has been after the family fining them twice, each time $15,000 for allegedly illegal construction, before issuing the demolition order.
In a new report on Israeli demolitions in the occupied territories, the Office of the European Union Representative in Jerusalem said the year 2021 saw a significant spike in the number of so-called ‘self-demolitions’ in East Jerusalem carried out by the owners themselves to avoid financial penalties or imprisonment in light of increasing pressure by the West Jerusalem Israeli municipality.
It was a year full of self-demolition orders!!
In 2021, 93 Palestinian-owned homes were self-demolished by order of Israeli occupation in occupied Jerusalem, making their residents homeless. pic.twitter.com/2sIuekBsel
— PALESTINE ONLINE 🇵🇸 (@OnlinePalEng) January 2, 2022
The report added that demolitions carried out by the Israeli occupation authorities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 2021 reached a 5-year high and that a total of 904 structures were demolished and 1,205 people were displaced, including 650 children.
This represented a 6% increase in the number of structures demolished and a 20% increase in the people displaced respectively, compared with 2020, said the EU report.
(WAFA, PC, Social Media)
