Tuesday 23 June 2009

IOA hands 65 orders for demolition of apartment buildings and homes in J’lem


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[ 23/06/2009 - 11:06 AM ]

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- The Israeli occupation authority police handed Sunday evening Palestinian families about 65 orders for the demolition of apartment buildings and homes in different areas of occupied Jerusalem during raids on Jerusalemite neighborhoods in Beit Hanina, Sha’fat and Wadi Qadoum.

Palestinian sources in Jerusalem reported Monday that the IOA had already issued similar demolition orders against apartment buildings in the neighborhoods of Nusseibeh and Beit Hanina, adding that the current orders are issued against new apartment buildings in Sha’fat and Beit Hanina and against two homes in Wadi Qadoum in Silwan.

For his part, Lawyer Ahmed Al-Rowaidi warned that the IOA decided to start implementing the scheme it set in 2000 in which the IOA considered itself the sole authority in Jerusalem, and pledged to bring one million Jews to settle in the holy city and to expel 20 percent of its indigenous Palestinian residents gradually until 2020, noting that the Jerusalemites make up 34 percent of east and west Jerusalem.

In another development, the Israeli high court issued Monday a decision allowing settlers from Kerem Maharal settlement outpost to build apartment blocks on the land of a Palestinian cemetery in the village of Igzim whose people were forced out by Israel in 1948.

Al-Aqsa foundation for heritage and endowment managed, according to a temporary precautionary decision issued in 2004, to stop any building works in the cemetery after those settlers had started then to destroy the graves as a prelude to build huge apartment blocks.

The same Israeli court decided on Sunday to allow the construction of cattle pens on the graves of Muslims in the village of Barwa, which was evacuated by force in 1948.

In another context, Adalah, the legal center for Arab minority rights in Israel, told a news conference held Monday in occupied Jerusalem that the IOA still puts the 1948 Palestinian refugees’ real estate and property up for sale in blatant violation of international humanitarian law.

Adalah said that this selling process is illegal even in Israeli law, noting that it submitted a complaint to the Israeli lands authority as a prelude to file a lawsuit with the high court.

According to the center, the Israeli lands authority had issued in this year and the past two years 285 tenders for the sale of these Palestinian real estate and property in different occupied Palestinian cities including Nazareth, Haifa and Jaffa.

These real estate and property belong to Palestinians who were forcibly displaced from their lands during the Nakba that befell Palestine in 1948.

What are these Israeli bulldozers doing?

Middle East Blog - Bulldozers:

"Sky News' Dominic Waghorn in East Jerusalem investigates Israeli bulldozers."



Palestine Video - A Palestine Vlog

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