House demolition disrupts euphoria of safe passage opening
Palestine-Israel, Politics, 10/26/1999

The euphoria of the smooth and widely-covered opening of the safe passage between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank could not last long as Palestinians and Israeli troops clashed in the town of Bethlehem. Israeli soldiers opened fire and shot dead a Palestinian youth who, they said, tried to stab one of the soldiers manning the Israeli roadblock next to Rachel Tomb on the northern entrance to the town. A few kilometers further to the north, in the neighborhood of Beit Hanina, Israeli police guarded bulldozers as they knocked down an Arab house, they said was built without a license.

The Israeli policy throughout the thirty years of occupation has not given the Palestinians the amount of building licenses they always hoped to have. Eventually, and in order to meet the needs of their demographic growth, Palestinians started to build without even waiting for an official permit from the Israeli authorities. They were convinced there was no point in waiting, certainly not when the whole city of Jerusalem has always been besieged by more and more Jewish settlements or housing compounds.

Earlier this year, Palestinians living in Jerusalem and representatives of the Jerusalem city council reached an agreement by which the latter would refrain from further demolitions of Arab houses. The Palestinians, in the same agreement, undertook not to build any new illegal houses and to wait for official permits.

Israeli peace activists, who were deeply involved in efforts that led to the agreement to be signed, hoped that the deal would provide both parties a reasonable solution for the inhabitants of Beit Hanina neighborhood in particular and to set a precedent for other places. But the Ministry of Interior Affairs was apparently unhappy at the deal and made it clear that it would go on with the policy of knocking down every illegal house in Jerusalem. And that was exactly what bulldozers did Monday morning in this northern neighborhood of Jerusalem.

The house, said the owners, was built some ten years ago and as such was covered by the agreement. The demolition went ahead though the owners had paid a years-long accumulated municipal tax of approximately US $1,800 in return for municipal recognition of their house.

A few hours before the demolition, news of the plan reached left wing members of the city council who tried their best to prevent, or at least to postpone the demolition until after the whole issue was discussed thoroughly and properly. Yet the ministry proved it was not ready for any sort of compromise and turned down even calls from foreign diplomats based in Jerusalem who requested a deferral of the demolition until further notice, sources close to left-wing Meretz party said.

Eyewitnesses said that a member of the Beit Hanina neighborhood committee who was carrying documents that proved the house was to be explicitly included in the inhabitants' agreement with the municipality, was blocked by police and not allowed to approach the scene of the demolition.

Palestinian sources said that the demolition was apparently ordered by the director general of the interior ministry, Avi Ma'oz, a renounced right-wing nationalist who identifies with the Jewish settlers of the West Bank. Ma'oz happens to be a settler and a leader of the El'ad religious-nationalist settler association which forcibly took over Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem's Silwan village.

Previous Stories:
  Dissolution of Israeli settlements starts   (10/20/1999)
  Gaza: Refugees so close to their homes, yet so far away!   (10/8/1999)
  Palestinian - Israeli talks resume   (9/14/1999)
  UK - Israeli demolitions, settlements   (4/21/1999)

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