On Friday, a Palestinian man was forced to demolish his home in the Al-Bustan neighborhood, in Silwan town, south of the Old City in occupied Jerusalem.
Media sources reported that the citizen Jumaa Muhammad Qara’in was forced to demolish his house in the Al-Bustan neighborhood of Silwan town, in order to avoid incurring steep fines imposed by occupation authorities.
Qara’in was forced to demolish a residential structure consisting of 2 rooms and a bathroom, on land measuring an area of 500 square meters, in addition to removing a number of trees and dismantling the surrounding sheet metal panels.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports that Israeli occupation authorities have demolished 589 Palestinian-owned structures since the beginning of the year.
Among the structures demolished were residential, industrial/commercial, and agricultural buildings which provided shelter or income. Authorities have demolished or ordered the demolition of 191 structures in Jerusalem, 130 in Hebron, and 103 in the Jordan Valley.
According to Article 17 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
1. Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
2. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.
Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that,
Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.
