On Monday, January 31, 2022, Israeli Occupation Authorities forced two Palestinian brothers to self-demolish their family houses in Jabal al-Mukaber, southeast of occupied Jerusalem, under the pretext of being built without Israeli permits.
The Israeli municipal authorities forced the two brothers, Daoud and Mahmoud Shkirat, to self-demolish their 80-sq homes in Jabal Mukaber. Both houses were built in 2012.
The two brothers were left homeless along with their eight children, although they were forced to pay 100,000 shekels (about $32,000) as building fines.
Local NGOs and rights groups have long pointed to a range of Israeli practices and policies in Jerusalem aimed at altering the demographic ratio in favour of Jews, a goal laid out as “maintaining a solid Jewish majority in the city” in the municipality’s 2000 master plan.
Unlawful settlement expansion, Palestinian home demolitions, and restrictions on urban development are some of the main ways being used to realise this goal, according to rights groups.
East Jerusalem is illegally occupied under international law. The “extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly” amounts to a grave breach of the 1949 Geneva Conventions and is considered a war crime, according to the 1998 Rome Statute of the ICC.
