IN RESPONSE to legal action taken by Adalah – The Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel – Israeli authorities have clarified that they are freezing home demolitions, said an Adalah press release yesterday.
On 17 August, Adalah Attorney Suhad Bishara sent a letter to Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit demanding an immediate halt to Israel’s accelerated policy of home demolitions in Palestinian neighbourhoods of occupied East Jerusalem. Israel had ramped up its demolitions of Palestinian homes in the city after Covid-19 morbidity rates dropped during the summer months.
According to a report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Israel demolished 31 buildings in East Jerusalem in July and August, leaving about 96 people homeless.
As of August, and since the beginning of 2020, Israel has demolished 112 Palestinian buildings and 261 people were made homeless as a result, including countless children. An additional 467 Palestinian residents were harmed as a result of partial demolitions of structures by the Israeli authorities.
In addition, Israeli authorities issued extensive warnings threatening home demolitions to Bedouin residents of the Naqab region during the summer and initiated legal proceedings seeking demolitions of Bedouin-built structures.
The Israeli Justice Ministry responded on 1st October 2020: ‘After re-examining things – and given the restrictions recently imposed by the government following the further spread of Covid-19 –it has been decided at this stage, to adjust the enforcement policy of planning and construction offences to align with the state of emergency, similar to the policy decided upon in March 2020.
‘1. The issuance of administrative demolition orders will be reduced and orders will be issued only in relation to new “illegal construction”, particularly that which has taken advantage of the state of emergency;
‘2. As a general rule, in an emergency, demolition orders for residential buildings will not be enforced;
‘3. Warning notices regarding demolition orders will also be kept to a minimum.’
Suhad Bishara, director of Adalah’s Land and Planning Rights Unit, responded: ‘Although Israel’s halt of its demolition of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem is an immediate necessary step, it should not be conditional on restrictions imposed by the government in response to Covid-19.
‘As long as we are facing this emergency, the freeze on home demolitions must remain in force. Within the wider context, Israel must end its restrictive measures imposed to prevent the development of Palestinian residential areas in illegally-annexed East Jerusalem and refrain from criminalising and penalising those forced to build or expand their homes without permits.’
The plain fact is that the Palestinian cause is strengthening, while Israel is being torn into pieces by the continuing anti-Netanyahu riots. A majority of Israelis are determined to get rid of their corrupt leader who is a lynchpin in the just-emerged Bahrain, UAE, Israeli and US military and economic plot against Palestine.
In fact, the Palestinian movements of the PLO and Hamas are uniting to hold a general election to bring forward a Palestinian government dedicated to establishing the Palestinian state.
It is the US, the UK and the EU that are in crisis! The US leader, Trump, the organiser of the plot to use Arab traitors to destroy Palestine, is fighting for his political life, and has been reduced to posing as the leader who is not afraid of death, and is now proposing that this death-wish be the basis of his return to the White House after November.
This superman death-wish pose cuts no ice with the over one hundred million US workers who are either jobless or on very low wages, and have no health care, no proper homes, and see no future for themselves under the heel of the plutocrat Trump.
The crisis also cuts no ice with the millions of workers in the UK and the EU who are being told that their future is zero – one of mass unemployment and cheap labour – and that they will be cut to pieces in the coming year.
The Palestinian people and the US, UK and EU workers are now in the same trench with the same enemy. The Palestinian people must elect their own government and form their own state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
The US workers must remove Trump in November and rapidly move forward to a Labour Party that will mobilise alongside a section of the International Commitee of the Fourth International to expropriate the US bosses and bankers, to go forward to socialism. The UK and EU workers must deal with their rapacious capitalists, whose only pledge is mass unemployment, by carrying out socialist revolutions. This is the only way
forward!
endsIN RESPONSE to legal action taken by Adalah – The Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel – Israeli authorities have clarified that they are freezing home demolitions, said an Adalah press release yesterday.
On 17 August, Adalah Attorney Suhad Bishara sent a letter to Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit demanding an immediate halt to Israel’s accelerated policy of home demolitions in Palestinian neighbourhoods of occupied East Jerusalem. Israel had ramped up its demolitions of Palestinian homes in the city after Covid-19 morbidity rates dropped during the summer months.
According to a report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Israel demolished 31 buildings in East Jerusalem in July and August, leaving about 96 people homeless.
As of August, and since the beginning of 2020, Israel has demolished 112 Palestinian buildings and 261 people were made homeless as a result, including countless children. An additional 467 Palestinian residents were harmed as a result of partial demolitions of structures by the Israeli authorities.
In addition, Israeli authorities issued extensive warnings threatening home demolitions to Bedouin residents of the Naqab region during the summer and initiated legal proceedings seeking demolitions of Bedouin-built structures.
The Israeli Justice Ministry responded on 1st October 2020: ‘After re-examining things – and given the restrictions recently imposed by the government following the further spread of Covid-19 –it has been decided at this stage, to adjust the enforcement policy of planning and construction offences to align with the state of emergency, similar to the policy decided upon in March 2020.
‘1. The issuance of administrative demolition orders will be reduced and orders will be issued only in relation to new “illegal construction”, particularly that which has taken advantage of the state of emergency;
‘2. As a general rule, in an emergency, demolition orders for residential buildings will not be enforced;
‘3. Warning notices regarding demolition orders will also be kept to a minimum.’
Suhad Bishara, director of Adalah’s Land and Planning Rights Unit, responded: ‘Although Israel’s halt of its demolition of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem is an immediate necessary step, it should not be conditional on restrictions imposed by the government in response to Covid-19.
‘As long as we are facing this emergency, the freeze on home demolitions must remain in force. Within the wider context, Israel must end its restrictive measures imposed to prevent the development of Palestinian residential areas in illegally-annexed East Jerusalem and refrain from criminalising and penalising those forced to build or expand their homes without permits.’
The plain fact is that the Palestinian cause is strengthening, while Israel is being torn into pieces by the continuing anti-Netanyahu riots. A majority of Israelis are determined to get rid of their corrupt leader who is a lynchpin in the just-emerged Bahrain, UAE, Israeli and US military and economic plot against Palestine.
In fact, the Palestinian movements of the PLO and Hamas are uniting to hold a general election to bring forward a Palestinian government dedicated to establishing the Palestinian state.
It is the US, the UK and the EU that are in crisis! The US leader, Trump, the organiser of the plot to use Arab traitors to destroy Palestine, is fighting for his political life, and has been reduced to posing as the leader who is not afraid of death, and is now proposing that this death-wish be the basis of his return to the White House after November.
This superman death-wish pose cuts no ice with the over one hundred million US workers who are either jobless or on very low wages, and have no health care, no proper homes, and see no future for themselves under the heel of the plutocrat Trump.
The crisis also cuts no ice with the millions of workers in the UK and the EU who are being told that their future is zero – one of mass unemployment and cheap labour – and that they will be cut to pieces in the coming year.
The Palestinian people and the US, UK and EU workers are now in the same trench with the same enemy. The Palestinian people must elect their own government and form their own state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
The US workers must remove Trump in November and rapidly move forward to a Labour Party that will mobilise alongside a section of the International Commitee of the Fourth International to expropriate the US bosses and bankers, to go forward to socialism. The UK and EU workers must deal with their rapacious capitalists, whose only pledge is mass unemployment, by carrying out socialist revolutions. This is the only way forward!
