Demolition of a Shop in Haris village Salfit Governorate

• Violation: Demolition of a shop.
• Location: Haris Village / Salfit Governorate.
• Date of violation: January 18^th /2022.
• *The perpetrator: the so-called Israeli Civil Administration.
• Victims : Citizen Uday Ahmed Mohamed Al-Sabti.

Description:                            

Tuesday, January 18^th , 2022, a large force of the Israeli occupation army, accompanied by the so-called Israeli Civil Administration stormed the western entrance of Haris village northwest Salfit. And carried on leveling a shop on the pretext of building without a license in Area C according to Oslo Accords.

Photos 1-3: The rubble of the commercial facility demolished by the occupation

The targeted shop has a total area of 130 m², It is built of bricks and tin plates on a concrete floor, It belongs to Mr. Uday Al-Sabti, 29 years old, the supporter of a family of 4 members -3 males and 1 female-  of whom two children.

The affected citizen told LRC the following:

“I opened the shop only three months ago, and in January 1^st 2022, I received a military notice to demolish the structure of the shop on the pretext of building without a license, the notice was issued under military Order No. 1797. The notice gave me 96 hours to get the store demolished. Having received this notice I immediately began to prepare a legal case, but the occupation carried out their threat and didn’t give me no enough time to present my case to the court.”

Last October, LRC field researcher documented the demolition of a similar shop at the same location, at the hands of the occupation forces for the same reasons. Most of the facilities located there are threatened with halt of work or demolition orders and some of them have already been demolished during the past years as the aforementioned case of Mr. Al Sabti.

 Legal Commentary:

The demolition of Palestinian homes and structures is a violation of international conventions and agreements:

• Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which states that “Destruction and usurpation of property in a manner not justified by military necessity and on a large scale in an unlawful and arbitrary manner is a grave breaches of the convention.
• Article 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1948 prohibits the destruction of property, as this article states the following: “The occupying power is prohibited from destroying any private, fixed or movable property related to individuals or groups, the state or public authorities, or social or cooperative organizations, unless the war operations inevitably require this destruction.
• Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states: “No protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed.
• Paragraph ‘g’ of Article 23 of the Hague Convention of 1907 AD also warned against destroying or seizing the enemy’s property, unless the necessities of war necessarily require such destruction or seizure.
• Article 17 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, dated December 10, 1948 states that “No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property”.

About Haris:

7 km to the northwest of Salfit governorate, Haris is located with a total land area of 8769 dunum, of which 190 dunums are the village’s built-up area. Haris is surrounded by the villages of Deir Istiya from the north, Kifl Haris from the east, Kfar ad-Dik and Bruqin from the southwest and Qarawat Bani Hassan from the west.

It has a total population of 3740 people according to the census of Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics for 2009. Those people hail from the following families: Abu Atta, Dawoud, Salamih, Sultan, Shihada, Souf, Faz’, Awwad, Qasim, and Klaib. The Israeli occupation confiscated 3631 dunums from the village as follows: 

1. Israeli colonies confiscated 2672 dunums as detailed in the below table

1. 726 dunums were confiscated to open the bypass roads numbers ( 505, 4765, 5506)
2. The apartheid wall confiscated 233 dunums for its establishment. Upon its completion, the wall will isolate 7135 dunums

According to Oslo Accords, the lands of Haris are classified as follows:

• 631 dunums are classified as area “B”
• 7815 dunums are classified as area “C”

[1] GIS-LRC

Prepared by
 The Land Research Center
LRC