TWELVE MORE DEMOLITION ORDERS

SERVED TO ARAB JERUSALEM RESIDENTS

13 September 1996

Over the last month, twelve families from the village of Sur Baher in southern Jerusalem received demolition orders against their houses for having no building permit, threatening to displace some 20 people. These houses are located in the West Bank part of the village in a neighborhood which already has many older homes, some built over 10 years ago. The demolition orders state that these houses will be demolished in October.

Sur Baher is suffering along with many other Arab villages within the Jerusalem municipaltiy from the Municipality's house demolition campaign designed to minimize or eliminate the native Arab population of Jerusalem. This crusade took on new intensity after the election of the current Likud administration. Ten houses were demolished in August in the Jerusalem area alone, compared to three in the month of May (the month before the Israeli elections) from the entire West Bank and Jerusalem. Over 120 Arab homes have been demolished in the West Bank and Jerusalem since the signing of the Oslo agreement in September 1993.

Sur Baher village, which straddles the Green Line (the armistice border drawn up after the war in 1967) between Jerusalem and the West Bank, faces a peculiar situation in which its residents are considered Jerusalem residents, the village receives Jerusalem municipal services, yet half of the village lies in the West Bank. Despite the fact that these twelve families (who live technically in the West Bank) are considered Jerusalemites and pay Jerusalem municipal taxes, their demolition orders were served by the Israeli Civil Administration, the occupation military authority which governs the West Bank. Besides the pain of displacement and dispossession that the destruction of family homes entails, the fact that the rules of the displacement game are so arbitrary only heightens the injustice inherent in it.

LAWE - The Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment has taken on six of these cases. In order to strengthen the cases for these families, LAWE again urgently calls on diplomatic missions, the international community and concerned individuals to write faxes condemning the policy of house demolition to Prime Minister Netanyahu (972) (2) 566 4838, Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai (972) (3) 6916940, and the General Commander of the Occupied Territories Uzi Dayan (972) (2) 530 533.

LAWE - The Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment is a non-governmental organization, dedicated to preserving human rights through legal advocacy. LAWE is also an affiliate member of the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights.