RAMALLAH – The Jewish-dominated Jerusalem municipality Tuesday demolished a Palestinian home in the East Jerusalem's neighborhood of Al-Tour saying it was “illegally built.” Ahmed Al-Rowaidhi, the chief of Al-Quds Unit at the Palestinian Presidency, said that inspectors from the municipality accompanied by Israeli police and Border Guard officers demolished the 160 square meters home claiming its owner Bassam Mohammed Al-Ja'bari was not in possession of a valid construction license. Al-Rowaidhi said that the house was build near the separation wall. He added that the municipality's inspectors handed demolition warrants to the owner two weeks ago. He added that Al-Ja'bari's family has been living in the house since four years. The official said that clashes erupted between the residents and Israeli forces. No injuries were reported. The residents of Al-Tour have been trying to get the municipality to approve an expansion to the neighborhood due to the natural increase of their population, but the new plan would make such an expansion impossible especially since the neighborhood is surrounded by Israeli settlements. Al-Rowaidhi said that 20,000 homes in several parts of the city are under the threat of demolition. He added that the Palestinians build the homes without permits “due to the laws and regulation imposed on Jerusalemites by the Israeli authorities and the lack of building plans in several Arab neighborhoods.” The Palestinian official said the municipality “uses the statute 212 of the Israeli Law of Building and Planning against the citizens.” He added that the same statute was in the demolition of al-Sharaf and al-Magharebah neighborhoods in 1968 and other demolitions in 1998 and 2005. Some East Jerusalemites started since 2000 to carry out the demolitions themselves to avoid paying exorbitant fines for the homes build without licenses from Israeli authorities, fearful they could become mired in debt. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said recently that at least 93,100 Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem are under the threat of displacement due to the Israeli house demolition policy. OCHA said in a new report that the residents are living in structures built without permits from the Jerusalem municipality. It added that the municipality demolished 42 Palestinian structures in the disputed city. The UN body said several other structures were self-demolished. It added that only 13 percent of East Jerusalem is zoned for Palestinian construction, much of which is already built up, compared with 35 percent which has been expropriated and zoned for the use of Jewish settlers. The policy of house demolitions and settlement building in East Jerusalem is being used by the Israeli authorities and Jewish-dominated Jerusalem municipality to increase Jewish presence and manipulate the composition of the population in order to gain more control over the city prior to final status talks with the Palestinian Authority. Israel captured East Jerusalem in the June 1967 War, annexed it in 1980, and has since built settlements there that are home to some 300,000 Jewish settlers. The Palestinians hope to make East Jerusalem the capital of their future state but the Israel says the city is its eternal capital.
