JERUSALEM, Wednesday, May 3, 2023 (WAFA) – The Israeli municipality of West Jerusalem and the army demolished a 16-apartment Palestinian-owned residential building in the Anata town, northeast of occupied East Jerusalem, under the pretext it was built without a permit, according to local sources.
They said a large police force surrounded the area where the 6-story building was located before a bulldozer started to knock it down.
The building has three apartments on every floor, each 150 square meters in area, and the first floor was inhabited while the others were still in the construction stage.
The Israeli municipality issued last month dozens of demolition orders against Palestinian-owned buildings in East Jerusalem under the pretext of construction without a permit, which is something Jerusalem’s Palestinian residents know is almost impossible to get from a racist municipality that seeks to increase the number of Jews in the occupied city while decreasing its indigenous Palestinian residents by not issuing them building permits.
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.
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”.
