Sunday, April 4^th 2021, Citizen ‘Amer Shqairat carried on demolishing his own home in Jabal Al-Mukabir village south Occupied Jerusalem, that followed a municipality resolution passed on the pretext of building without a license from the occupation.

The targeted house 90 m², has a total area of 4 bedrooms, a bathroom and a kitchen, and cost 250 thousand shekels, inhabited by citizen ‘Amer and his family of 6, 4 of them are children.

Citizen ‘Amer Shqairat told LRC the following:

“I built my house in 2016 after the construction was completed, municipality employees gave me a summon to the court, the session resulted in imposing a 60 thousand shekels fine . A series of court session continued until the middle of March 2021, ended with an order of self-demolition within 21 days after the order’s date, or otherwise the occupation municipality will carry out the demolition and make me pay all the costs , so I complied with the court order.”

It is never easy to demolish your own home, the place where the family gathers safely and privately, especially when you have daughters and they have to live with neighbors or relatives until they find a new home. When the house is demolished the family breakdown, and each one of its members live at a different house until they manage to build a new home.

 LRC field observers kept a close eye on the matter and recorded 720 cases where the owners had to demolish their property by themselves during the past ten years (2010 -2020) making 1444 civilian citizens, more than 726 of whom are children, homeless and lacking security and stability. 94 cases were reported during the year 2020, a 140% increase in comparison to last year 2019.

The following table shows more information about self-demolition cases in Jerusalem:

Source: Israeli Violations Monitoring Section – Land Research Center (2010-2020)

About Jabal Al Mukabbir:[1]

5 kilometers south Jerusalem city , Jabal Al Mukabbir is surrounded by Silwan (north, Ath Thuri (west) , Abu Dis and As-Sawahra Ash- Sharqiya (east) , As-Sawahra Al-Gharbiya (south).

Jabal Mukabbir and As-Sawahra Al-Gharbiya together have a total population of (21, 127 ) people in 2012 census-The Jerusalem academy of Israeli Studies-, Jabal Al Mukabbir has an area of 3,281 dunums , 682,7 of them are the towns built-up area.

Israeli settlements devoured 300 dunums of the town's lands:

[1] GIS-LRC

Protecting marginalized communities in Jerusalem through legal support and advocacy

This Publication has been produced with the assistance of the EU