MID: Israel orders dozens of east Jerusalem homes razed
23 Feb 2009 4:29 AM
JERUSALEM, Feb 22 AFP - Israel has ordered hundreds of Palestinians to leave their homes in annexed east Jerusalem, warning their houses are illegal, officials and residents told AFP on Sunday.
"The owners of 80 houses in the al-Bustan neighbourhood have received eviction notices saying that the structures will be destroyed because they are illegal," said Hatem Abdel Kader, an official responsible for Jerusalem affairs in the Palestinian government.
He said 1,500 people were living in the threatened houses in the neighbourhood abutting the Old City.
He said several of the houses served with demolition orders were built before 1967, when Israel captured east Jerusalem from Jordan during the Six Day War but numerous extensions have been built since.
"The (Jerusalem) municipality used this as a pretext to issue the demolition orders despite appeals by the residents," he said.
No comment was immediately available from the city authorities.
Abdel Kader said: "For the first time, the municipality offered (those affected) relocation to the neighbourhood of Shufat" in the north of the city's Arab eastern sector.
But he said the move still "amounts to a transfer of population from central Jerusalem".
"The reason (for the notices) is not legal, but political," he said. "Israel wants to create a demographic disequilibrium in the city."
A resident of the neighbourhood, Mahmud al-Abbas, said he received a demolition notice after failing to get a building permit from the Israeli authorities.
"I built my house a year-and-a-half ago," he said. "I asked for a permit but never received authorisation."
Israel, which considers the whole of Jerusalem its "eternal, undivided" capital, rarely grants building permits to Arab residents of east Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want to make the capital of their promised state.
According to the Israeli B'Tselem human rights organisation, Israeli authorities have demolished about 350 houses in east Jerusalem since 2004, saying they were built without permits.
