Israel’s Ben Gvir oversees demolition of Palestinian homes in occupied East Jerusalem

Israeli minister Itamar Ben Gvir oversaw the demolition of a Palestinian-owned residential building in occupied East Jerusalem on Tuesday, leaving around 70 people homeless, most of them women and children.

After riding a bulldozer at the demolition site, Ben Gvir wrote on X that the state of Israel had reclaimed the land.

“The bulldozers of governance never rest for a moment,” the national security minister wrote.

“That’s the only way it works.”

Fayez Khalfawi, who lived in the building, said residents were caught off guard when Israeli bulldozers surrounded the building at around 3am.

Soldiers stormed the apartments, forcing open doors without knocking, and forcibly evicted residents, who were prevented from retrieving their belongings.

“Women and children were asleep and were terrified when the apartments were stormed,” Khalfawi told Middle East Eye.

“Some women rushed out without headscarves due to the shock of the raid, while the children screamed and cried inconsolably.”

According to Khalfawi, the demolition spared nothing. The entire building was razed, and the contents of every apartment were destroyed.

“We are searching through the rubble for our clothes, hoping we might be able to retrieve them,” he added.

During the demolition, Ben Gvir arrived at the site flanked by heavily armed police.

He climbed into a bulldozer and filmed a video from inside it, as campaigning intensifies ahead of the upcoming Israeli elections later this month.

“This morning, I arrived together with the governance bulldozers in the al-Tur neighbourhood of East Jerusalem, to make sure on the ground that my policy is being implemented,” he said on X.

Al-Tur is a neighborhood on the Mount of Olives approximately 1 km east of the Old City of Jerusalem.

“Over the past year and a half, we have demolished 10,000 illegal structures and returned to the state an area equivalent in size to Tel Aviv and Givatayim combined,” he claimed.

The five-storey building in the al-Tur neighbourhood housed around 70 people across 10 apartments.

Khalfawi said the families received a final notice to leave on Monday, giving them less than a day to remove their furniture.

The first demolition notice was issued in 2011, citing a lack of building permits.

Israeli authorities make such permits extremely difficult for Palestinians to obtain.

The families subsequently challenged the demolition order in Israeli courts, but their objections were rejected, and they were denied the necessary permits, despite having submitted applications more than four times.

Over the years, residents were also compelled to pay fines, penalties, and taxes totalling tens of thousands of dollars annually.

Making life impossible for Palestinians

The Palestinian Authority’s Jerusalem Governorate condemned Ben Gvir’s involvement in the demolition, calling it “official incitement” against Palestinians and electioneering at the expense of their rights.

It said the demolition was part of a wider policy of home demolitions and forced displacement aimed at altering the demographic and urban character of occupied East Jerusalem.

Israel’s occupation and later annexation of East Jerusalem are not recognised under international law. The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits an occupying power from making permanent changes to occupied territory except where required for military or humanitarian reasons.

The demolition comes amid a wider escalation in the destruction of Palestinian homes in Jerusalem.

The Jerusalem Governorate says Israel carried out 427 demolitions in the city between January and the end of September.

'Any attempt to build without a permit results in immediate demolition'

- Amjad Shihab, political science professor at Al-Quds University

According to an Ocha report last month, Israeli authorities demolished 86 Palestinian structures across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, between 15 and 21 September alone.

The demolitions displaced 147 Palestinians, including 73 children. Thirteen of those displaced were in East Jerusalem.

Amjad Shihab, a political science professor at Al-Quds University, said the situation marked the start of a period in which Palestinians faced increasingly few “red lines”.

He said Israeli authorities were tightening restrictions on Palestinians in East Jerusalem as part of what he described as a displacement campaign.

“More than 70 percent of Palestinians in Jerusalem live below the poverty line,” he said, adding that high taxes, restrictions on construction and settlement expansion were making life increasingly difficult.

“Any attempt to build without a permit results in immediate demolition,” he added.

“There is insufficient work, life is unstable, prospects are bleak, and the land is being eroded by settlement projects.”

Shihab said the message to Palestinians was clear: “You have no future here, so leave.”