House demolition makes refugee family homeless a fourth time

Jerusalem, 27 October (EAPPI) - Israeli bulldozers demolished the house of a Palestinian refugee family in East Jerusalem today, the fourth time the Shahaada family has seen their home destroyed.

Khamees Shahaada, who lives with his wife and six children, told EAPPI that bulldozers arrived shortly before six o'clock this morning and destroyed the house within minutes. The demolition follows a prolonged legal battle involving a radical Israeli settler group said to be backed by the American billionaire Irving Moscovich.

The Shahaada family live in the Shufat refugee camp, just meters from the separation barrier that cuts the camp's residents off from most parts of Jerusalem. 

Their home until five or six years ago was one of twelve houses in the immediate vicinity of towering concrete wall that runs along the bottom of the valley. But years of pressure by radical Zionist settler group, the Jewish Land Fund (JLF), led to most of the houses being demolished in around 2004.

Mr Shahaada told EAPPI that Arieh King, head of the JLF, personally offered the families 100,000 Israeli shekels each (around $27,000) for their houses, but they refused to sell.

Later, an Israeli court ordered the houses demolished on the grounds that they were built without permits. Palestinians in some areas, particularly Jerusalem, find it almost impossible to obtain permission to build and are thus forced to build illegally. 

Most of the 12 families demolished their own houses in order to avoid paying the hefty bill sent to Palestinian families whose homes are knocked down by government contractors. But the Shahaadas, whose home was closest to the wall, decided to rebuild. 

When their second house was also destroyed following a court order, they built a simple metal structure that was also demolished. The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), an Israeli human rights group, reacted by helping them build a third house. Today, this lay in ruins, a pile of snapped concrete and twisted iron.

Khamees Shahaada, standing in the shade of a tree next to his former home, said he planned to stay on his land.

"If I leave, this whole area will be taken," he told EAPPI. We asked where he, his wife and his six children would sleep.

He said: "I have a tent."