A call from a neighbor warning him to run to the house he had almost finished building awoke at dawn to Nader Elayan. When he arrived it was too late: a bulldozer was tearing down the walls. Over a hundred Israeli security guards containing the neighbors.
The demolition, which took out the past four years, leaving Nader Elayan, his wife, Fidaa, now pregnant, and her two young children without a place to live in the already crowded room with his brother. It is the only land he owns and has invested all his savings in building the now demolished house.
In recent years two dozen other families in the Palestinian village of Anata, just outside east Jerusalem, have shared the same fate as Nader Elayan. Hundreds more families have demolition orders hanging over their homes. "It has been granted permission to build a house or a single person in my neighborhood," says Nader Elayan, 37.
The problem of house demolitions affects Palestinians throughout the occupied territories. But according to Hatem Abdelkader, an adviser to Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister, the situation is particularly acute in the area of \u200b\u200bEast Jerusalem.
said the result of Israel's policy of denying building permits to many of the 250,000 Palestinians of East Jerusalem has been the classification of 20,000 city homes as illegal from the occupation began in 1967. Only last year the Jerusalem municipality issued more than a thousand orders demolition of "illegal dwellings". It is believed that three out of four Palestinian homes in the city are built without permits.
"The illegal building is simply a pretext to destroy the homes and lives of Palestinian families," said Jeff Halper, director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD, for its acronym in English).
"The demolitions are part of a policy to stop the natural expansion of Palestinian communities in and around Jerusalem, freeing the maximum amount of land for use by Israeli settlers," Halper continues. "The demolitions increase the pressure on the Palestinians to move into the West Bank so that in doing so lose their residency rights in the city. "
In an act of rebellion Halper's organization and 40 international volunteers helped the family rebuild their home Elayan in an attempt to draw attention to what the committee called the "quiet ethnic cleansing" of East Jerusalem. The work was carried out during a summer camp for two weeks funded by the English government. Madrid also paid for the stay of the 18 English volunteers.
"For the first time a government supported the reconstruction of a Palestinian house 'illegal' demolished by the Israeli authorities," Halper said.
The issue of house demolitions is back in now today after two separate incidents occurred in July in which two Palestinians, both residents of Jerusalem, circulated around town in a bulldozer razing what their path. They killed three Israelis and left many more. Although the two Palestinians were killed at the scene of a fire, Israeli officials, including Ehud Barak, the defense minister, are calling for the demolition of their homes, leaving their families homeless, to deter others from doing same.
This punitive destruction of homes completed in 2005 by the threat of rejection laws, but not before that 270 homes were destroyed "for security reasons" during the first year of the Intifada.
However, according to Halper, the use of demolitions against Palestinians accused of illegal building is a much more important. "We estimate that at least 18,000 homes have been destroyed during the four decades of occupation." Indeed
Halper believes it is possible that the actual number of houses demolished is double the official figures. Many demolitions are not registered and are the Palestinians themselves for fear of heavy fines are imposed when the Israeli army issued demolition orders.
"Most demolitions are of multi-storey buildings are home to several families, meaning that well over 100,000 Palestinian families may have been made homeless by Israeli administrative policies," he said.
Since it was founded a decade ago, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions has rebuilt 150 Palestinian homes as part of its campaign to attract the attention of Israeli Jews and the international community about the problem of house demolitions . It's been an uphill battle, says Halper. The European Union has recently improved its relations with Israel, announced this month to withdraw its funding for ICAHD.
But the field work this year may make a little more difficult to continue demolishing house in Anata, Halper says: "One thing is to destroy a house built on a supposedly illegal for a Palestinian and another one built to destroy money provided by the English government. "
Halper also believes that presenting these groups as summer camp volunteers from the Palestinian cause can begin to change public perception.
Alonso Santos, an architecture student from Madrid, 21, said he had learned much to see first hand Palestinian life under occupation.
"It opened my eyes to realize that urban planning principles that we teach at the university were using the Israelis, but exactly the opposite of common purpose. The planning rules here are designed not to improve the lives of the Palestinians but for them more miserable. "
The volunteers were housed on a peace center and located in Anata erected on the site of the house of Salim Shawamreh, which was demolished four times by Israeli authorities. Known as Arabiya House, by the name of the woman Shawamreh, one side of the building is decorated with a mural depicting the death of Rachel Corrie, an American peace activist, by an Israeli bulldozer that had been demolishing homes in Gaza.
"Imagine your children go to school in the morning and return later when they realize their home, their whole world has disappeared while they were gone," said Shawamreh. "That happened to my children four times. It is a cruelty that can not be expressed in words. "
Shawamreh, whose family were refugees in 1948 from northern Negev, said that had he and ICAHD established the peace center to call attention to the difficult living conditions of Palestinians in Anata. Today the house is under the watch of a police station in the valley, which is part of the future growth of a large Jewish settlement, Maale Adumum, that Palestinians and Israeli human rights groups believe it is splitting into two West Bank.
The peace center is also near both the winding route of the Israeli separation wall and a new ring road (part of what is considered an apartheid road system) that is being built to ensure that Jewish settlers can drive separately from Palestinians across the West Bank.
Arabiya House is a temporary reprieve from demolition while Israeli courts determine its status.
Halper says that judges are reluctant to confirm the destruction order because his group has threatened to bring the case before the International Court of Justice if the verdict is against the house.
Jonathan Cook is a journalist and writer who works in Nazareth. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
This article was originally published in The National (http://www.thenational.ae), published in Abu Dhabi.
The demolition, which took out the past four years, leaving Nader Elayan, his wife, Fidaa, now pregnant, and her two young children without a place to live in the already crowded room with his brother. It is the only land he owns and has invested all his savings in building the now demolished house.
In recent years two dozen other families in the Palestinian village of Anata, just outside east Jerusalem, have shared the same fate as Nader Elayan. Hundreds more families have demolition orders hanging over their homes. "It has been granted permission to build a house or a single person in my neighborhood," says Nader Elayan, 37.
The problem of house demolitions affects Palestinians throughout the occupied territories. But according to Hatem Abdelkader, an adviser to Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister, the situation is particularly acute in the area of \u200b\u200bEast Jerusalem.
said the result of Israel's policy of denying building permits to many of the 250,000 Palestinians of East Jerusalem has been the classification of 20,000 city homes as illegal from the occupation began in 1967. Only last year the Jerusalem municipality issued more than a thousand orders demolition of "illegal dwellings". It is believed that three out of four Palestinian homes in the city are built without permits.
"The illegal building is simply a pretext to destroy the homes and lives of Palestinian families," said Jeff Halper, director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD, for its acronym in English).
"The demolitions are part of a policy to stop the natural expansion of Palestinian communities in and around Jerusalem, freeing the maximum amount of land for use by Israeli settlers," Halper continues. "The demolitions increase the pressure on the Palestinians to move into the West Bank so that in doing so lose their residency rights in the city. "
In an act of rebellion Halper's organization and 40 international volunteers helped the family rebuild their home Elayan in an attempt to draw attention to what the committee called the "quiet ethnic cleansing" of East Jerusalem. The work was carried out during a summer camp for two weeks funded by the English government. Madrid also paid for the stay of the 18 English volunteers.
"For the first time a government supported the reconstruction of a Palestinian house 'illegal' demolished by the Israeli authorities," Halper said.
The issue of house demolitions is back in now today after two separate incidents occurred in July in which two Palestinians, both residents of Jerusalem, circulated around town in a bulldozer razing what their path. They killed three Israelis and left many more. Although the two Palestinians were killed at the scene of a fire, Israeli officials, including Ehud Barak, the defense minister, are calling for the demolition of their homes, leaving their families homeless, to deter others from doing same.
This punitive destruction of homes completed in 2005 by the threat of rejection laws, but not before that 270 homes were destroyed "for security reasons" during the first year of the Intifada.
However, according to Halper, the use of demolitions against Palestinians accused of illegal building is a much more important. "We estimate that at least 18,000 homes have been destroyed during the four decades of occupation." Indeed
Halper believes it is possible that the actual number of houses demolished is double the official figures. Many demolitions are not registered and are the Palestinians themselves for fear of heavy fines are imposed when the Israeli army issued demolition orders.
"Most demolitions are of multi-storey buildings are home to several families, meaning that well over 100,000 Palestinian families may have been made homeless by Israeli administrative policies," he said.
Since it was founded a decade ago, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions has rebuilt 150 Palestinian homes as part of its campaign to attract the attention of Israeli Jews and the international community about the problem of house demolitions . It's been an uphill battle, says Halper. The European Union has recently improved its relations with Israel, announced this month to withdraw its funding for ICAHD.
But the field work this year may make a little more difficult to continue demolishing house in Anata, Halper says: "One thing is to destroy a house built on a supposedly illegal for a Palestinian and another one built to destroy money provided by the English government. "
Halper also believes that presenting these groups as summer camp volunteers from the Palestinian cause can begin to change public perception.
Alonso Santos, an architecture student from Madrid, 21, said he had learned much to see first hand Palestinian life under occupation.
"It opened my eyes to realize that urban planning principles that we teach at the university were using the Israelis, but exactly the opposite of common purpose. The planning rules here are designed not to improve the lives of the Palestinians but for them more miserable. "
The volunteers were housed on a peace center and located in Anata erected on the site of the house of Salim Shawamreh, which was demolished four times by Israeli authorities. Known as Arabiya House, by the name of the woman Shawamreh, one side of the building is decorated with a mural depicting the death of Rachel Corrie, an American peace activist, by an Israeli bulldozer that had been demolishing homes in Gaza.
"Imagine your children go to school in the morning and return later when they realize their home, their whole world has disappeared while they were gone," said Shawamreh. "That happened to my children four times. It is a cruelty that can not be expressed in words. "
Shawamreh, whose family were refugees in 1948 from northern Negev, said that had he and ICAHD established the peace center to call attention to the difficult living conditions of Palestinians in Anata. Today the house is under the watch of a police station in the valley, which is part of the future growth of a large Jewish settlement, Maale Adumum, that Palestinians and Israeli human rights groups believe it is splitting into two West Bank.
The peace center is also near both the winding route of the Israeli separation wall and a new ring road (part of what is considered an apartheid road system) that is being built to ensure that Jewish settlers can drive separately from Palestinians across the West Bank.
Arabiya House is a temporary reprieve from demolition while Israeli courts determine its status.
Halper says that judges are reluctant to confirm the destruction order because his group has threatened to bring the case before the International Court of Justice if the verdict is against the house.
Jonathan Cook is a journalist and writer who works in Nazareth. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
This article was originally published in The National (http://www.thenational.ae), published in Abu Dhabi.
