House demolished again, the saga continues
Palestine-Israel, Local, 8/4/1998

"The challenge goes on and we will never give up," said Salim Shawamreh hours after Israeli bulldozers leveled for the second time his house in Anata, east of Jerusalem. Salim and dozens of Palestinian and Israeli peace activists finished by Saturday evening the reconstruction of the outside skeleton of his house, demolished by the Israeli military government some three weeks earlier.

In the early hours of Monday morning, Israeli troops besieged the house and kicked Salim out of his house. A number of Salim's guests, including members of the Peace Now and Christians for Peace movements, were also thrown out of the house. A scuffle that broke out between them and the Israeli soldiers ended with serious injuries to one of the Christian team members who fell from the wall and sustained wounds all over his body.

"We have not changed our mind and we will rebuild the house in the next few days," said Salim, whose wife and six children were still in Amman, Jordan. They had left for Jordan after the children suffered a terrible trauma upon seeing Israeli soldiers and a bulldozer destroying their house, built with money Salim saved in his 16 years of work in Saudi Arabia. "I cannot say when will we start the re-construction. Sure we have to draw proper conclusions out of what had happened over the past few days. I believe there is a set of preparations that we need to finish before work goes off the ground again," said Salim.

He admitted that he does not have any more financial resources that he could count on to cover the cost of building his house again. "But I am deeply grateful to those who stood by my side and helped me rebuild the house. The bottom line, however, is not how much money people can donate to help us in the fight but how strong the moral support we get because this is a battle between good and evil, between right and wrong," he said.

Salim insisted that the Israeli military government has no right whatsoever to ban the construction of his house. He recalled how, back in 1994, he was made to believe by senior army officers that the permit would be granted to him without any problem. "Today with the Likud in power, evidently all those promises had evaporated, like almost everything else that resulted from the Oslo Accords," he said.

Israeli military sources said the house was re-demolished because it was illegal and because Salim Shawamreh had decided to rebuild his house without having any legal permits that allow him to do so.

The fight over Salim's house is likely to top news coverage in the near future since Israeli opposition groups and peace activists have decided to embark on this precise incident. They wanted to underscore the illegality of the house demolition policy that Israel has been applying since it conquered the West Bank and East Jerusalem in the June 1967 war. According to Palestinian and Israeli statistics, Israel has demolished 1,800 houses in the past decade and a similar number of houses have been marked for destruction in the coming years.

Previous Stories:
  Rabbi speaks against immoral Israeli practice, other Israelis help   (8/3/1998)
  Jerusalem mufti says Israel plans to demolish al-Aqsa mosque   (5/14/1998)
  Report: Hundreds of buildings destroyed in 1997   (3/28/1998)

Please add a link on your webiste pointing to ArabicNews.com and bookmark ArabicNews.com & subscribe to our daily email news bulletin.

Search