Jerusalem building with 70 Palestinians faces Israeli demolition

Al-Tur, Occupied East Jerusalem – Some 70 Palestinians, about half of whom are children, are at risk of forced displacement in the Jerusalem neighborhood of al-Tour as they await an Israeli court ruling on the fate of their five-story residential building.

Israeli authorities informed residents on 4 November that they had a week left in their homes before the building was demolished due to lack of building permits.

Residents told Al Jazeera that they were offered another ultimatum on Sunday: either to pay a refundable 200,000 shekels ($64,400) and self-destruct by the end of the month, or to state their For it will do – at the cost of two million shekels ($644,000).

Residents’ attorney, Hussain Ghanayam, said they filed an appeal on Monday, and a court hearing is scheduled for Thursday for officials to decide what steps they will take.

The five-story apartment building is located in the Khalat al-Ain sub-neighborhood of Al-Toor (pronounced at-toor), also known as Jabal al-Jaitun (Mountain of Olives). According to the families’ lawyer, 70 residents from 10 families have been housed, like many other homes in the area, since construction without a building permit issued by Israel in 2012.

Rights groups and Palestinians have long refused to issue building permits to Israeli authorities in occupied East Jerusalem, which the United Nations has called for. They say It is part of a “restrictive planning regime” that “makes it nearly impossible for Palestinians to obtain building permits, hinders the development of adequate housing, infrastructure and livelihoods”.

Five-story apartment building at risk of demolition by Israeli authorities is home to 10 Palestinian families including 70 people [Al Jazeera]

Residents have opted to stay in the building until the bulldozers arrive. He has repeatedly applied to obtain permits, and spent nearly nine years in courts battling demolition orders, but each time under different pretexts was denied by the occupiers, he says.

“We are staying here until they come and force us to leave,” said 47-year-old Rania al-Gouz.

He and other residents say they neither have 200,000 shekels ($64,400) to pay the state, nor do they intend to demolish the building itself because of security risks.

“This is mass forced displacement. There is nothing we can do at this point,” echoed Rania’s 25-year-old son, Iyad.

“They think that if they demolish our homes they will get rid of us – they don’t know that it will only increase our resilience,” Iyad said as he stuffed the falafel into a piece of cake – a Palestinian mole. of bread to native Jerusalem.

Iyad al-Gauz is sitting beside his mother Rania. The 11-member Al-Gouz family lives in a three-bedroom apartment [Al Jazeera]

Since moving into the building, families have been paying a monthly fine to the Israeli-controlled Jerusalem Municipality in the amount of 75,000 shekels ($24,153) per year per family, for living in an “unlicensed building”. They pay a high property tax as well as attorneys’ fees, known as arnona in Hebrew. Many of them say they are in debt, while others say they cannot rent a house in another area.

According to Ghanayam, the lawyer, the land is privately owned by a member of the Abu Sabitan family, who have apartments in the building. But he says the occupation authorities refused to grant the license, saying the land “is zoned for public use”. He told Al Jazeera that officials said they intended to build a school for the area instead.

According to The United Nations captured only 13 percent of East Jerusalem, which Israel occupied after the 1967 war, is currently zoned for Palestinian development and residential construction, much of which is already built.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said, “Inadequate and improper planning of the Palestinian neighborhood has led to widespread incidents of ‘illegal’ construction and demolition of structures by Israeli authorities.”

About 57 percent of all land in occupied East Jerusalem is covered by private Palestinian owners, including the construction of illegal settlements and the area of ​​land referred to as “green areas and public infrastructure”. Remaining 30 percent, OCHA notes, includes “unplanned areas” where construction is prohibited.

‘Dry our nerves’

Myasar Abu Halawe, a young mother of three daughters, moved into the building with her husband in 2013 after selling some of her gold to cover the downpayment on an apartment worth $100,000 at the time.

The 31-year-old told Al Jazeera that the November 4 decision came as a blow to residents who hoped to eventually obtain permits.

“We’ve been going through the same thing for the past nine years – we’ve had several demolition orders before, but we didn’t give up – we kept appealing the decisions,” Abu Halwe said. “Last year, we got signals that it was about to get a license, so my husband and I started investing more in our house.”

“It was going to be the house we settled in. It’s like, when you start seeing your lives together at the end, they push you down to the bottom zero.”

Mayasar Abu Halweh with her husband and three daughters, Maryam, 5, Julia, 9, and Elia, 10 [Al Jazeera]

“I graduated from university while living in this house, gave birth in it, raised my daughters in it. It is a testimony to the love we have fostered in our family. The time we spent in it during Corona !” Tears rolled down his face, before his youngest daughter, five-year-old Mary, hugged him with a kiss.

“They’re draining our nerves—destroying us financially and emotionally,” she said, adding that she and her husband are still paying the cost of the apartment.

“We’re supposed to be here, in tents. Why should we move so easily? It’s no different from Sheikh Jarrah. Seventy people homeless is another naqba.”

no room to expand

at-tur is one of the most crowded Palestinian neighborhood in Jerusalem. Two illegal Israeli settlements have been built on the neighboring land, while it is blocked by extension by neighboring Palestinian villages, settlement roads and a separation wall.

According to BIMCOM – an Israeli rights organization consisting of planners and architects – et-Tour’s “historic core” is “very densely built and has almost no land reserves for residential construction”.

planning rights group famous that “the only hope of expansion is to the northeast, where the unrecognized sub-neighborhood of Khalat al-Ain is located,” but that a national park plan is being advanced there, while “additional habitat clusters are considered illegal.” because they were built on areas not zoned for housing”.

“The residents of At-Tur, mainly in unrecognized and unplanned areas, live under constant threat of house demolition and evacuation orders,” said BIMCOM wrote in 2014.

Mayasar Abu Halawe with his five-year-old daughter Maryam [Al Jazeera]

Ghanaim told Al Jazeera that it defends residents of another 155 buildings and houses in the Khaled al-Ain area that lack permits.

“From 1967 to the present day, they have not created a single masterplan that meets the needs of the residents of At-Tur,” Ghanayam said. “The building unlicensed in At-Tur is not because people do not want to have a license, it is because of the reality that people live in,” he said, noting the dramatic increase in the population of the neighborhood versus the lack of permits issued by Jerusalem. In view of the Municipality.

According to Israeli media, the municipality Presented A structural map for At-Tur and the surrounding city of al-Isawiya on Sunday that will need to be discussed and approved by the authorities. It is not clear whether the plan will allow residents to obtain a license, which is a long and expensive process, for existing or new buildings.

At least a third of all Palestinian homes in occupied East Jerusalem lack building permits, potentially putting more than 100,000 residents at risk of displacement, According to OCHA.

Local NGOs and rights groups have long pointed to a number of Israeli practices and policies in Jerusalem aimed at changing the demographic ratio in favor of Jews, a goal As prescribed “Maintaining a solid Jewish majority in the city” in the municipality’s 2000 masterplan.

Some of the main methods used to achieve this goal are illegal settlement expansion, Palestinian house demolition, and restrictions on urban development, According to rights group.

‘No excuse’

Back at the Al-Gouz family home, Iyad, who lives with his parents in their three-bedroom apartment with his two sons, wife and siblings, told Al Jazeera that he hopes their children will have a “better future”. .

“We have no choice – nowhere to go. There are huge spaces here, no excuse for them to stop giving us permits,” said Iyad, pointing to the large open space adjacent to the building.

“The world must come and see the injustice in which the Palestinian people live, outrage. We are not the first or the last to go through this.

Families say they were hoping that after years of paying fines and going through the courts, they would have got the permit [Al Jazeera]

“We see how some settlers set up mobile homes in buildings like Modi, or in the West Bank, and a few years later it’s a manufactured settlement,” Iyad said.

Faiz Khalafvi, 60, whose family owns two apartments in the building, agreed.

“If we bring settlers to live here, they will get permits in 24 hours and the state will do everything for them,” he told Al Jazeera.

“Jerusalem Municipality does not want any Palestinians in Jerusalem.”