Israeli Civil Administration bulldozers demolished a private garage in the Palestinian neighborhood of Beit Hanina, in the central occupied West Bank district of Jerusalem.
According to local sources, the garage was demolished under the pretext that it was built without the difficult-to-obtain Israeli permit.
Sources added that, prior to the demolition, a large number of Israeli forces were deployed across the area, preventing residents from reaching it.
The demolished garage belonged to resident Anwar Dawla, according to Ma’an.
Israel uses the pretext of building without a permit to carry out demolitions of Palestinian-owned homes on a regular basis.
Israel rarely grants Palestinians permits to build in East Jerusalem, though the Jerusalem municipality has claimed that compared to the Jewish population, they receive a disproportionately low number of permit applications from Palestinian communities, which also see high approval ratings.
According to a report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the occupied Palestinian territory, the cumulative number of structures targeted so far in 2018 (251) has remained below the figure in the equivalent period of 2017 (286). All of the incidents during July took place on grounds of lack of building permits.
OCHA added that, in recent decades, Israeli settler organizations, with the support of the Israeli authorities, have taken control of properties within Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, and some 180 Palestinian families are currently facing eviction cases, filed mainly by settler organizations.
(photo: PNN)
