On Monday, Israeli soldiers demolished three Palestinian homes in the Wadi Al-Jouz neighborhood in the occupied capital, Jerusalem, in the West Bank.
Media sources said several army and police vehicles surrounded the neighborhood before invading it and ordering the families out of their homes, housing twenty Palestinians from the local Totah family.
The soldiers also ordered the families to remove their furniture and belongings from the homes before demolishing them for “being built without a permit from the City Council.”
Yahia Totah said in a phone interview with the Palestinian News and Info Agency (WAFA) that two homes were 60 square meters each, and one was 120, and that Israel had already demolished several homes for members of his family since the year 2015.
He stated that the family tried to obtain all the needed permits and documents and paid large amounts of money in legal applications and fees, but the City Council insisted on demolishing the properties.
According to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), Israel demolished 107 structures in the occupied territory, and four Palestinian homes in Israel, displacing 155 Palestinians and affecting 522 others.
B’Tselem statistics also revealed that more than 131.000 Palestinian homes have been demolished since 1947 and added that, in 2022, Israel demolished 926 Palestinian structures in the occupied territories, displacing 953 persons and directly affecting 28.255 others.
In the Negev, Israel demolished 431 Palestinian homes and 2553 agricultural and livelihood structures.
While Israel continues to build and expand its illegal colonies, Palestinian communities, and towns, in occupied Jerusalem, and various areas in the occupied West Bank, continue to be denied the right to build homes and property.
Meanwhile, Israeli colonizers continue to occupy Palestinian lands, in addition to the escalating assault, including uprooting and bulldozing the Palestinian farmlands and the constant destruction of their property.
All of Israel’s colonies in the occupied West Bank, including those in and around occupied East Jerusalem, are illegal under International Law, the Fourth Geneva Convention in addition to various United Nations and Security Council resolutions. They also constitute war crimes under International Law.
Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states: “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” It also prohibits the “individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory”.
