Land Research Center

23 June 2018, Ahmad Ayash demolished his own home carrying out the occupation's order under allegations that he built without getting a permission , His home is an apartment of a total space 30 m² , it is inhabited by 5 members, 3 of them are children.

remains of the apartment after the demolition.

Ahmad Ayash told LRC:

"The added part was built 25 years ago in 1993, it is an addition to an old house (50 m²) , because the house is small so we added a 30 m² room, we didn't get any notices about unpermitted buildings until 2016 , we received a court order, after several sessions, the Judge decided that I should pay an expensive fine of 76 thousand shekels under the allegation of building without permission.

Then after other several sessions the judge decided that I demolish the room myself or they will do it,  I will have to pay extra fine if they did, so we decided to demolish it ourselves, In Saturday 20 June , I completely destroyed the room"

The occupation municipality in Jerusalem put obstacles in front of people of Jerusalem when they try to get permissions for  new buildings or to add on buildings that already exist. They claim that they are trying to organize the area, at the same time they refuse any suggested plans from the residents  to organize it, which proves that there are policies by the occupation against residents of Jerusalem, Nevertheless, they work on displacing residents of Silwan and Damascus gate areas through colonial institutions. For example,  the case in Batn Al-Hawa quarter , there are tens of law cases against families of the area in order to displace them and give their houses to colonial foundation.

This case study is part of Kan'aan Project