The occupation municipality’s dozers demolished October 17, 2017 two houses in the neighborhood of Wad Yasool in Silwan under the pretext of "unlicensed construction".

Reportedly, the occupation’s bulldozers raided the neighborhood of Wad Yasool in Silwan along with municipality’s employees and demolished two houses owned by Abu Rajab family.

The houses belong to the following:

Omar Abu Rajab explained that the two houses were built nearly two years ago while the municipality handed the family the demolition orders on the claim of "unlicensed construction". Since then, the demolition was postponed several times and a session was recently held to postpone it again but the judge didn’t make a decision. He pointed out that the family had filed the required documents to the court and had started the process of licensing their property.

Raed explained that his family informed him about the occupation authorities’ raid on the house and their intention to demolish it after he had left to work in the early morning. Upon arrival to the area, he was not allowed to enter his house and help out emptying it due to the closure imposed on the area. He pointed out that the demolition was executed on top of most of the houses’ contents.

It should be marked that the occupation's municipality bans any construction act in Wad Yasoul area and distributes administrative demolition orders for the owners of houses in the neighborhood. The municipality aims at annexing the neighborhood to the colonies of Jabal Al-Mukabir area.

The policy of the occupation authorities seek to harass Jerusalemites and push them to leave their residences to become available for colonial plans; they never grant building permits and licenses for any Palestinian in the area and this how indirect displacement policy is done. Financial costs of permits is almost impossible to be covered. Thus, hundreds of families remain incapable to build or license their existing buildings, facing the eventual fate of demolition.

Land Research Center LRC sees that demolitions contradict with all of the International conventions and Humanitarian laws including:

• Article 17 of the (1948) Universal Declaration of Human Rights stating: “Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.”
• Section ‹G› of article 23 of the (1907) The Hague Conventions asserting: “In addition to the prohibitions provided by special Conventions, it is especially forbidden to destroy or seize the enemy's property, unless such destruction or seizure be imperatively demanded by the necessities of war.”
• Article 53 of the Geneva Fourth Convention (1948) declaring: “Any destruction by the Occupying Power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons, or to the State, or to other public authorities, or to social or cooperative organizations, is prohibited, except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations.”

This case study is part of Kan'aan Project