The Israeli occupation municipality ordered on April 04, 2017 a Jerusalemite to self-demolish his house in the neighborhood of Al- Aqaba in Beit Hanina, north Jerusalem city on the claim of "unlicensed construction".

It is reported that the house belongs to citizen Hafith Rajabi and is of 120m² in area.

Hafith Rajabi said that he built the house in 2003 and now lives with his seven member family including four children in it. In 2006, the occupation municipality employees came to the house, photographed it and issued a violation fine of 100,00 NIS on the house.

In 2014, the occupation municipality employees came to the house and hanged an administrative demolition order on it. This meant that the municipality will demolish the structure within 48 hours. The citizen, at time, sought many attorneys and civil engineers to prepare the needed documents for issuing a building permit from the municipality, which rejected the applications many times.

 forced to self-demolish his house that was built 15 years ago in order to avoid paying demolishing costs to the occupation municipality.

Rajabi explained that the occupation police at Nabi Yaccoub police station requested him on April 01, 2017 and informed him about the need to self-demolish his house or it will be demolished by municipality crews and he has to pay the demolition costs which could be 250 thousand NIS.

On April 04, 2017, Rajabi rented a bulldozer for 6000 NIS to execute the demolition of his house following the order of the municipality.

The citizen and his family are now living in a rented apartment in Kfar Aqab, north Jerusalem city. This transformation negatively affected the psychology of children since they had to change schools and be away from their friends and previous environment.

This case study is part of Kan'aan Project