Twelve people were lightly injured Sunday as a strong police force used force to expel an Arab Israeli family and demolish the family home in Haifa.ÂÂ
Policemen used force to move out Abu-Shkar family and a group protesters, who had been barricaded in the home slated for demolition since Saturday. Fifteen of the protesters were arrested.
On Sunday morning, dozens of people, including MK Abdulmalik Dehamshe (United Arab List), gathered in a tent erected near the house to protest against the demolition order issued by the Haifa Municipality.
The mayor’s office explained that the procedure to demolish the house, built illegally in an area designated as an industrial zone, began five years ago.
Yoav Bar, an activist working against the house’s demolition, said that the evicted family had been living in a clutch of tin-huts and temporary lodgings near the Hazera factory ever since the British mandate, and that they had built a modest building on the site of one of their tin-huts.
