On the morning of June 15, 2022, the Israeli municipality stormed Al-Mentar Street in Wadi Al-Homs, one of the neighborhoods of the town of Sur Baher, south of Jerusalem, accompanied by police and army forces and a JBC bulldozer, and proceeded to demolish the house of the citizen Muhammad Mahmoud Rabay’ah without prior warning, under the pretext of not having a license. with the cost of demolition and crews may reach about 60 thousand shekels, about 20 thousand dollars.

The owner told the field researcher to the Land Research Center:

“That during the past nine months I was able to freeze the demolition order several times and paid large sums and violations for this, reached about 90,000 shekels, or about 20 thousand US dollars, but after all this I was surprised that the municipality stormed the place and started demolishing immediately and before the family can save some of the furniture of the house”.

 show the effects of the demolition of the house

The owner of the house stated that "I built this house for my son and his family and he lived happily in it and had two children in it, but the occupation forces have blackmailed me in the past period and tightened the violations, so I found my son now after the demolishing in a small room in my house, as we cannot rent an apartment for him and his family because it was spent on licensing. On the demolishing day, the municipality attended and did not give us any time, and stormed the place with force and violated the sanctity of the house, and my son’s wife was pulled out. The house then was demolished while the furniture still there, including the bedroom, and others things.”

show the presence of the bedroom under the ruins

The owner built this house in 2015 in order to accommodate his son and his family of four. It consists of a bedroom, a hall, a kitchen and a bathroom with an area of about 50m², and the construction cost amounted to about 150,000 shekels, about 50 thousand US dollars.

Wadi al-Hummus neighborhood is a neighborhood that is considered an extension to the east of the town of Sur Baher, which is located south of Jerusalem. The area of the neighborhood’s lands is about three thousand dunums, most of which is located in the lands of the Palestinian Authority (A), but in the areas under the control of the occupation, the residents of the neighborhood suffer from continuous demolition and confiscation operations, in addition to the presence of the American road on one side and the separation wall on the other.

Sur Baher village[1]:

3 km south Jerusalem city, Sur Baher is bordered by Al-Sawahira Al-Gharbiyya, Jabal Al-Mukabir and (Talpiot) settlement on confiscated lands (North), The Green Line and the occupied territories of 1948, Ash-Shaikh Sa’ad village (east), and Beit Sahour, Umm Tuba and Har Homa settlement (south).

Sur Baher and Um Tuba together have a population of 18,137 people in 2011 census “The Jerusalem Institute for Israeli studies 2012”.

The town’s population come from several families: Duyat, Dabesh, Nemr, Eleyan, Hamada, 'Amaira, Abu Kufur, Bukairat, Jbour, Jad Allah, Abu Jamid , Al Atrash.

Sur Baher has a total area of 6,894 dunums , of which 2,076 dunums are the town’s built up area, it is in the borders of the occupation’s municipality in Jerusalem, after they illegally annexed it in 1967.

The occupation confiscated (1517) dunums from Sur Baher for the following purposes:

Talpiot settlement, which was established in 1973 devoured 1291 dunums , and inhabited by 12,591 people.

The segregation wall (2,260 m long) devoured 226 dunums, and blocked 6,033 dunums (west) and 861 dunums (east).

Oslo conventions divided the town as the following:

•           A area (764) dunums.

•           B area (134) dunums.

•           C area (5,995) dunums.

[1]   GIS-LRC