Occupied Jerusalem- The people of the Al-Jadira neighborhood in the town of Jabal al-Mukaber, south of occupied Jerusalem, woke up at dawn on Wednesday to the clamor of storming the house of al-Maqdisi Iyad Shuqairat and an attempt to forcefully evacuate it in preparation for its demolition under the pretext that it was built without obtaining the necessary permits from the occupation municipality in Jerusalem.
The occupation forces – who accompanied the bulldozers to complete the demolition operation – did not give Aisha Shuqairat, the daughter of the house owner, the opportunity to take care of her younger siblings or calm them down due to the sudden intrusion, and she and her relatives were not given the opportunity to empty the house of its contents before it was demolished.
Speaking to Tel Aviv Tribune Net, Aisha said, “Her father followed the procedures for obtaining the necessary licenses, and made great strides in them, but these procedures faltered with the outbreak of the war in Gaza, and the municipality did not give them time to complete them.”
A law that excludes the judiciary
Aisha added, “They stormed the house without warning, intending to demolish it. They were expelled from a gathering to help us empty the house. They threw sound and gas bombs at us, stole our phones, and attacked me because I had a Palestinian flag in my possession. They spat on it and trampled on it.”
This young woman’s mother was in the hospital with her sick brother, and for a moment she felt that she was responsible not only for her younger siblings, but also for a two-story house whose corners would be leveled, its memories erased, and its contents buried forever.
A commercial store and two residential apartments, each with an area of 150 square meters, were destroyed by the fangs of the occupation bulldozers, but not before the tribal residents of Jabal Mukaber obstructed the demolition process for hours, after they insisted on parking their vehicles on the way to the house to prevent the bulldozers from reaching it.
The activist in following up on the demolition operations in Jabal Mukaber, Engineer Muhammad Bashir, began his talk to Tel Aviv Tribune Net by saying that the homes of this town are threatened with demolition, either because of the settlement project known as “American Street,” or because of the confiscation of lands to establish settlement projects, or because the homes are subject to the “Kaminitz” law that came into force. Effective in October 2017.
With the enactment of this law, building inspectors of the occupation municipality in Jerusalem were given full authority to issue administrative violations worth hundreds of thousands of shekels without the need to go to court, from which the authority to postpone the implementation of demolition orders was also withdrawn.
Based on this law, there is no legal path that can be followed to postpone or prevent the demolition of homes built from 2017 onwards.
Bulk notifications
According to lawyer Raed Bashir, the area of Jabal al-Mukaber’s land is 4,000 dunams, on which 37,000 Jerusalemites live, and the municipality claims that the percentage of land suitable for construction does not exceed 13%.
Their teams handed over demolition notices for 62 buildings in favor of constructing the “American Street,” part of which was demolished, while 79 other buildings handed over notices to demolish homes under what is known as the “Kamenitz Law.”
In the face of this bitter reality, the people of this town found themselves faced with the specter of a massive demolition haunting their property. In March 2022, the tribes issued a charter in which they declared their rejection of self-demolition, which is the demolition by Jerusalemites of their homes with their own hands to avoid heavy fines from the occupation municipality.
Simultaneously with this, a collective movement was launched by the townspeople to sit in front of the occupation municipality building to demand that it stop the policy of demolishing homes. On the one hand, the young men also devised means of resistance to prevent the occupation bulldozers from advancing towards the homes targeted for demolition. They poured oil in their path, ignited waste containers, and engaged in confrontations with the forces. Occupation on the other hand.
Israeli occupation bulldozers demolish a house and a commercial store belonging to Jerusalemite citizen Iyad Shuqirat from the town of Jabal Mukaber in occupied Jerusalem. pic.twitter.com/XQb37x8lU2
– Tel Aviv Tribune Net | Jerusalem (@Aljazeeraquds) January 3, 2024
Peaceful meets brutality
This Wednesday morning, Engineer Muhammad Bashir confirmed that the angry young men responded to the demolition operation that targeted Iyad Shuqairat’s house with loud takbeers and an intense presence around the house, which the forces storming the town responded to with a brutal assault that resulted in the arrest of 11 young men, and by imposing arbitrary fines on the vehicles that were parked in the road to the house to obstruct Demolish it.
Regarding the insistence of the people of Jabal Mukaber not to remain silent in the face of the demolition policy, Bashir said, “This prompts the police to call in more forces and to think carefully before committing new demolition crimes,” adding that “the severe repression with which the police are facing the peaceful popular movement aims to deter Residents of other Jerusalemite towns to discourage them from thinking about resisting this policy.”
He concluded his speech to Tel Aviv Tribune Net by saying, “The pace of demolition in the town has increased significantly under the new extremist government, and we have noticed the acceleration of administrative demolition procedures and judicial decisions supporting the implementation of more demolitions. This has more political and demographic dimensions than legal ones related to unlicensed construction.”
It is noteworthy that the Jerusalem Governorate – the highest official Palestinian representation in Jerusalem – documented the implementation of 316 demolition operations in the governorate during the year 2023, and 79 of the facilities were forcibly demolished by their owners to avoid the heavy fines imposed on Jerusalemites if municipal bulldozers carried out the demolition.