Ramallah: Five Israeli military bulldozers demolished on Monday a five-storey building in the village of Abu Dees of occupied East Jerusalem under the pretext that the structure was erected without a building license from the occupation.
A large Israeli military force and Border Police officers raided the village and forced the residents of the building to evacuate. Occupants were given only five minutes to depart and were not permitted to take any of their belongings except official documents.
The building had sat on 1,000 square metres of land and was owned by Dr Mutasem Adeelah, a lecturer at Al Quds University.
Dr Adeelah said that the destruction caused by the Israeli bulldozers was such that only small cement blocks remained at the scene. He said that the remnants are unusable.
“The first two floors of the building were licensed back in 1959 before the Israelis occupied and annexed the city,” he told Gulf News. “Only few years ago, I secured building licenses from the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) as my land is located on village land that is under PNA jurisdiction,” he said. “I was shocked to get an official demolition order from the occupation’s municipality in Jerusalem.”
Dr Adeelah said that he received the demolition order on April 30, 2013 and that he submitted official complaints to the Israeli occupation authorities. He said that the Israeli Lands Department and the Israeli Civil Administration have both confirmed that the land on which the building was constructed is West Bank territory under the PNA’s jurisdiction and agreed that was the reason the PNA had licensed the building. “The official testimonies of the Israeli departments did not convince the occupation municipality in Jerusalem that this was West Bank land,” he said.
He said that the municipality did not give him the chance to appeal the demolition order although the owner had submitted official complaints with the Jerusalem Magistrates Court, the Israeli Central Court and the Israeli Higher Court of Justice. The occupation municipality in Jerusalem did not wait for the courts’ decisions and went ahead with the demolition.
During the building’s demolition, clashes erupted between Palestinian youth and Israeli armed force members who had escorted the bulldozers. In these clashes, at least three Palestinian teenagers sustained serious injuries due to the Israeli use of live fire.
