DaysofPal – Since October 7, 2023, Israeli occupation authorities have demolished 623 Palestinian homes and structures across occupied East Jerusalem, according to a statement released Wednesday by the Jerusalem Governor’s Office.
The statement described the demolitions as part of a “systematic campaign targeting the Palestinian presence” in the city, with homes, some of them inhabited for decades, destroyed alongside commercial and economic facilities that had served as sources of livelihood for dozens of Palestinian families.
“The demolition list included homes, some inhabited for decades and others under construction, as well as commercial and economic facilities that provided livelihoods for dozens of Jerusalemite families,” the office said.
In the latest incident, Israeli bulldozers, accompanied by heavily armed forces, demolished a house in the town of Hizma in northeastern Jerusalem. The office emphasized that this action was not an isolated case but part of a larger effort to displace Palestinians from their city.
The governor’s office accused Israeli authorities of pressuring Palestinian residents to self-demolish their homes under threat of steep fines or imprisonment, calling the practice a “systematic racist policy aimed at involving the victims in its crime and exhausting them mentally and financially, with the ultimate goal of driving them out of the holy city.”
According to the office, many affected families had spent years paying substantial fines, in some cases exceeding the original cost of construction, only to be denied the right to build legally. Despite their efforts, building permits remain almost impossible to obtain.
“The approval rate for construction licensing applications remains below two percent,” the statement noted, adding that Palestinians are only permitted to build on no more than 13 percent of East Jerusalem’s total area, a policy that rights groups have long criticized as discriminatory and aimed at altering the city’s demographic balance.
The governor’s office concluded its statement by calling on international bodies to intervene and pressure Israel to halt these actions, which it described as part of a broader campaign to erase Palestinian presence from the city.
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