On Thursday, Israeli occupation authorities forced a Palestinian family to carry out the demolition of their own home in the Old City of occupied Jerusalem, in the occupied West Bank.
The house, located near Bab Hutta and belonging to Jerusalemite resident Abla Al-Aljawi, was targeted under the pretext of lacking a building permit.
WAFA News said the demolition order came after the family refused to open their home to allow illegal Israeli colonizers passage toward the walls of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
This coercive practice, known as forced self-demolition, is routinely imposed on Palestinian families in Jerusalem.
Those who refuse are subjected to punitive demolitions by Israeli bulldozers, along with exorbitant fines and demolition fees.
The policy is part of a broader system of structural discrimination, where Palestinians are systematically denied building permits while illegal settlements continue to expand.
The Jerusalem municipality consistently refuses to issue construction licenses to Palestinian residents, then uses the absence of permits as grounds for demolition.
These actions violate international law and fundamental human rights, including the right to housing. They form part of a calculated strategy to forcibly displace Palestinians from the city and reshape its demographic landscape in favor of settler expansion.
At dawn Thursday, illegal Israeli paramilitary colonizers stormed the town of Atara, north of the central West Bank city of Ramallah, attempting to set fire to a Palestinian vehicle and vandalizing private property with racist slogans.
On Wednesday, Israeli paramilitary colonizers launched coordinated assaults Wednesday on Palestinian homes and property in the at-Tiran neighborhood, south of Hebron, in the southern part of the occupied West Bank.
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 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits collective punishment and acts of terror against civilian populations.
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”.
Articles 53 and 147, which prohibit the destruction of civilian property and classify pillage as a war crime.
