Tuesday, August 25^th 2020, Jerusalemite Khalid Al-Khalis was forced to demolish a part of his own house on the pretext of building without licenses.

The targeted part has a total area of 90 m² , it is only a part of a total of 180 m² house , the building is located in Ein Al-Louza neighborhood in Silwan south Al-Aqsa mosque, the targeted house is a home for a family of 9 , 7 of them are children.

Khalid told LRC the following:

“Early this year, I added a new part to my old house and during the construction phase last April; employees from the municipality showed up and summoned me to the Magistrate’s court.

The court decided to demolish the structure on the pretext of building without licenses, while we applied for a license several times and the occupation authorities refused under claims that the area needs organization.

Today morning, A massive army force accompanied by bulldozers showed up to demolish the new part, and after hours, the responsible on the demolition operation came and told me that the municipality will not complete the demolition because it is hard to reach all parts of the building, and that I should implement the operation myself or pay 150,000 NIS to the municipality, while the construction of this segment cost me 60-70 thousands shekels. Noteworthy, In June 21^st, I paid about 20,000 shekels as licensing fees, So I decided to carry out the demolition myself, to avoid paying the high fine.”

About Silwan:[1]

1 Km south Jerusalem, Silwan is surrounded by Jerusalem (north & east), the green line (west) , Ath-Thori and Jabal Al-Mukabir (south).

Silwan has an area of 1,400 dunums, 855 of them are the town’s built up area.

[1] GIS-LRC

This report was made with EU funding , the contents of this document are LRC responsibility and do not reflect the positions of the European Union