- Violation: demolishing two houses under the pretext of security.
- Location: Qarawat Bani Hassan, west of Salfit.
- Date of violation: 26/07/2022.
- The aggressor party: The Israeli occupation army.
- The affected party: the families of the two prisoners, Youssef Samih Muhammad Assi, and Yehia Muhammad Awad Marei.
- Details of the violation:
In the early morning hours of Tuesday (7/26/2022), the Israeli occupation army stormed the town of Qarawat Bani Hassan, located to the west of the city of Salfit. The occupation army imposed a complete closure on the town after storming it with large numbers of the occupation army, afterwards it raided two houses located in the center of the town, which are owned by the families of the prisoner Youssef Samih Muhammad Asi and also the house of the family of the prisoner Muhammad Awad Mustafa Asi, then, the force started to evacuate the two houses of their residents and start carrying out demolitions there.
Demolition of the family home of the prisoner Youssef Samih Muhammad Assi:
The house consists of two floors with a total area of 200 m², located to the west of the town. The grandfather and grandmother of the prisoner Youssef (20 years old) lived on the first floor, while the second floor was inhabited by (8) individuals: the prisoner’s parents, two sisters and three brothers, in addition to the prisoner himself.
It is noteworthy that the Israeli occupation used an Israeli military bulldozer to completely demolish and level the house, knowing that the house had been in existence for thirty years until the moment of the demolishing.
For his part, the citizen Samih Asi, the father of the prisoner Youssef, stated:
“The occupation forces handed my family a notice to vacate the house in preparation for its demolition, and gave us only 7 days, while my son is still in the prisons of the occupation”.
He added the following:
“We were surprised by large numbers of soldiers around the house without warning, before they expelled us from the house so that their forces began preparing for demolition, and by 2am in the morning, the occupation bulldozers began to demolish the two-storey house”.
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Photos (1-3) The house of the prisoner Youssef Assi, which was demolished
- Demolition of the house of the family of the prisoner Yahya Muhammad Awad Maree:
A few meters away on the outskirts of the town, the occupation also demolished the house of the family of the prisoner Yahya Muhammad Awad Maree (19 years old). The house consists of three floors, with an area of 400 m², where 11 people lived, including the prisoner Yahya, and the family consisted of parents, (3) Females and (5) males, noting that there are (4) children in the family, and the 87-year-old grandfather of the prisoner who lived on the first floor.
It is noteworthy that the occupation imposed a siege around the house and forced all its residents to go out into the open, that is before a squad of explosives specialists surrounded the house and detonated it in the early hours of Tuesday morning, which also led to the cracking of three houses adjacent to the targeted house.
The father of the prisoner, Mr. Muhammad Awad Maree, told the field researcher the following:
“The occupation dealt with us brutally, as the occupation forces gave us only 5 minutes to vacate the house, which are not enough minutes to take a last ‘goodbye look’ at it. We left and our memories remained hanging on the walls of the house, before the occupation detonated it”.
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Photos (4-6) The house of the family of the prisoner Yahya Awad has been turned into rubble.
It is worth mentioning that the occupation accuses the two prisoners of being involved in shooting at Israeli settlement, as the commander of the occupation army in the West Bank issued an order on (11/06/2022) to demolish the two houses under security reasons. It was rejected by the occupation army, as the two families then went through the HaMoked Foundation for Human Rights to the Supreme Court of Occupation, and in mid-July, the court rejected the petition, and ruled that the two houses to be demolished within a maximum period of seven days, the demolition then was carried out on time.
The Land Research Center sees this aggressive attack against Palestinian homes as falling within the policy of collective punishment pursued by the occupation authorities against the families of martyrs and prisoners, a policy through which the occupation seeks to pressure families, intimidate them, destroy the rest of their lives, “abuse” them, and impose difficult living conditions, such as dispersing them and demolishing their homes. Moreover, the occupation authorities acknowledge that such decisions aim to “deter” the Palestinians so that they do not carry out operations against the occupation and the flocks of its settlers who actually carry out crimes against the Palestinians and who have committed crimes of burning the Palestinian homes.
In addition, the settlers running over of children and women on the roads, especially near the settlements, as well as, committing crimes against thousands of trees, including burning, destruction and bulldozing, not to mention the theft of land in favor of continuous settlement expansion. All of these attacks and the list goes on. During their attacks, the settlers did not find any deterrent, neither by arresting them nor by demolishing their homes, on the contrary, all these attacks were protected by the Israeli occupation army.
Since the Jerusalem Intifada in early October 2015 until the end of 2021, the field research team at the Land Research Center documented the occupation forces’ implementation of demolition, bombing and/or closure operations that caused the demolition of 92 houses, including 4 homes that were demolished during the year 2021alone, which led to damages. As a result, 82 houses were partially damaged after the apartments in the middle of a building were blown up, which is a strategy to harm as many people as it is possible.
Since 2022, the occupation has demolished 13 homes under the pretext of security and partially damaged 12 other homes during the operations. The occupation targeted the homes of:
- On 02/01/2022, the home of the family of martyr Fadi Abu Shkheidam – his wife, Suad Abu Shkheidam, was demolished in Shuafat camp in occupied Jerusalem.
- On February 14, 2022, the home of the family of the prisoner Mahmoud Ghaleb Mahmoud Jaradat was demolished in Silat Al Harthiya, Jenin Governorate.
- On 08/03/2022, the home of the prisoner’s family, Ghaith Ahmed Muhammad Yassin Jardat, was demolished in Silat Al-Harithiya, Jenin Governorate.
- On 08/03/2022, the home of the prisoner Muhammad Youssef Jaradat family, consisting of two apartments, was demolished in Silat Al-Harithiya, Jenin Governorate.
- On 05/07/20222, the home of the family of the prisoner Omar Muhammad Yassin Jaradat was demolished in Silat Al Harthiya, Jenin Governorate.
- On 06/02/2022, the house of the family of the prisoner Diaa Hamrasheh was demolished. It is a residential building consisting of stores and five apartments, 3 of which were completely destroyed and 2 were partially damaged in the town of Ya’bad in the Jenin governorate.
- On 07/26/2022, two buildings were demolished, each building containing of two apartments for the families of the two prisoners, Youssef Assi and Yahya Maree, in the town of Qarawat Bani Hassan in Salfit.
Although the policy of home demolitions is illegal and immoral, the Israeli Supreme Court approves demolition orders as a matter of routine, which reflects that the occupation’s judicial system is a real tool in implementing the occupation’s agenda on the ground.
The occupation authorities issue orders entitled “Announcement of Intent to Confiscate and Demolish a Residence….” Those whom it accuses of resisting under the British Emergency Law during the Mandate period in Palestine, according to the law 119 of 1945. Bearing in mind that this unjust law was repealed before the end of the Mandate in 1948. Moreover, the wife of the accused and his large family or tenants in the building are not accused according to the British law, in addition to the family harm, it also causes cracks in the rest of the apartments of the building, which are inhabited by neighbors and strangers who do not know the accused person.
Since Article (119) of this law deals with “demolition and confiscation,” this means that a citizen cannot rebuild his home in the place of the demolished one. The occupation authorities are also keen to annually extend the emergency law issued by the British Mandate over Palestine, to be used against Palestinian citizens.
