Land Research Center

The occupation municipality crews in Jerusalem stormed the Sheikh Anbar neighborhood in the town of Al-Tur, east of Jerusalem, with the help of the police and army, accompanied by bulldozers, on the morning of January 25 (25.1. 2022), aiming to demolish the house of the family of the Jerusalemite Muhammad Hamdi Karama. The Demolition targeted the second floor of two apartments.

It is noteworthy that the house, consisting of two floors and four apartments, is located in a residential area and is not isolated. The upper floor of it, consisting of two apartments of 130 square meters each, was targeted, as the owner lives in one of these apartments in addition to the renter, Hamada Qirsh who occupies the second apartment. The owner's apartment houses nine people (among them 6 children, 2 females) , and the second apartment houses the tenant's family, which is seven people (5 children and 3 females) . Each apartment contains three rooms, in addition to utilities such as bathrooms, kitchens, and others, at a cost of about one and a half million shekels (500 thousand dollars).

In details, the municipality immediately demolished the upper floor of the house, without any prior warning, on the pretext of not having a license.

 Mr. Muhammad Karama said “the house was built in 2013, and since then it has been suffering from the issue of lack of licenses and violations of the municipality. However, on the day of the demolition, I was never notified of this decision and the argument, according to what the citizen stated in the municipality’s tongue (we are not now informing of the decisions so as not to repeat the events of what happened in the Salhia house in Sheikh Jarrah).”

 Muhammad Karama also indicated that he had gone to the courts before that and issued an order to postpone but the decision was changed to a decision to demolish immediately and in front of the house. In light of this, the municipality fined the owner of the house with 182,000 shekels (70,000 dollars), in addition to the costs of cleaning the building from debris, which Mr. Karama is forced to do at a cost of up to 70,000 shekels (23,000 dollars).

It should be noted here that the damages are varied. On the material side, in addition to the fines, the lower floor of the house was badly damaged through the demolition of the upper floor with cracks, vibration and destruction in the walls, which needs a great effort to be repaired.

Psychologically and morally, the municipality, its crews, the police and the army attacked the family, beating and cursing some of them. Many of them were injured during the demolition, including Mrs. Dalal Karama, the wife of the owner of the house, who was hit by a rubber bullet in her hand, and the attacks affected everyone who was in the place.

As a result, the family of Muhammad Karama became homeless, as they live in the houses of their relatives in different parts of Jerusalem. As for Hamada Qarash and his family, they left the place and moved to Al-Eizariya.

Al-Tur town is located to the east of the city of Jerusalem, and it has been targeted by the occupation for a long period of time, as it is the eastern extension of the city of Jerusalem, the occupation has intensified its Judaization operations through the construction of several settlement outposts, the most important of which is the Hebrew University perched on the northern Al-Tur Mountains, in addition to the repeated displacement operations. Notifications of demolition and preventing residents from expanding. The separation wall separates the town of Al-Tur from Al-Eizariya, which is only hundreds of meters away from it, in addition to the intensive and frequent arrest campaigns that target the town’s residents on a daily basis.

Legal Commentary:

The demolition of Palestinian homes and structures by the occupation authorities is part of their violations of international and humanitarian law, and the violation of the right to adequate housing for Palestinian citizens guaranteed by international law and international treaties presented by the following articles:

The Fourth Geneva Convention, Article 147, stipulates that “extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly” is a “grave breach” of the Convention.

Article 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1948 prohibits the destruction of property, as this article states the following: “The occupying power is prohibited from destroying any private, fixed or movable property related to individuals or groups, the state or public authorities, or social or cooperative organizations, unless the war operations inevitably require this destruction.

Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states: “No protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed.

Paragraph ‘g’ of Article 23 of the Hague Convention of 1907 AD also warned against destroying or seizing the enemy’s property, unless the necessities of war necessarily require such destruction or seizure.

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This report was prepared with EU funding, the contents of this document do not reflect positions of the European Union