- Violation: demolition of an agricultural service room.
- Location: Qalqilya city.
- Date of violation:18/01/2022.
- The perpetrator: the so-called building inspector of the Israeli Civil Administration.
- Affected party: Citizen Rizkallah Zaid Abu Saeed.
The violation details:
On Tuesday, January 18, 2022, the Israeli occupation authorities demolished an agricultural service room owned by farmer Rizkallah Zaid Abu Saeed in the “Al Hasamis” area, east of Qalqilya, under the pretext that it was built without a permit.
An Israeli occupation army unit accompanied by the so-called Israeli Civil Administration and a bulldozer belonging to a private company, stormed the area and demolished the agricultural service room.
The area of the room that was demolished is 18m2, and it consists of a concrete floor, brick walls and roofed with tin sheets. Its construction was begun in the summer of last year, 2021. To the west of it, the occupation authorities had built a section of the Expansion and Annexation Wall in the year 2004.
The demolition of that room was preceded by a military order issued on the eleventh of the current January to demolish and remove it based on Military Order No. (1797), which did not allow the farmer to complete the license file for that room.
The affected farmer is the breadwinner for a family of 9 members, 5 males and 4 females, including 3 children. The main objective of building that room was to protect the land from confiscation due its vicinity to the Wall in light of the increasing pace of Israeli settlement in recent years.
It is noteworthy that the “Al Hasamis” area is considered one of the sites most targeted by the Israeli occupation due to its proximity to the bypass roads and the Wall that penetrate the lands of the governorate, in addition to the presence of an occupation army camp in that particular area.
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Photos 1-3: The rubble of the room that was demolished by the occupation
Legal Commentary:
The demolition of Palestinian homes and installations by the occupation authorities is part of their violations of international and humanitarian law, and the violation of the right to adequate housing for Palestinian citizens guaranteed by international law and international treaties presented by the following articles:
- 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”.
Prepared by
The Land Research Center
LRC
