The Shawamreh family faces the terrible prospect of having their home demolished by the Israeli authorities. They live in the West Bank Town of Anata. Their home has already been demolished by the Israeli authorities 4 times and the Israeli supreme court recently ruled that it can be demolished again. The Shawamreh family home has become a symbol of resistance to Israel's unjust home demolition practices.

The home demolitions that the Shawamreh family have had to endure are part of an established Israeli policy. 24,000 homes have been demolished in the area Israel seized in 1967. Some of these demolitions were explained as collateral damage and occurred during military operation. 4000 homes were demolished during the recent invasion of Gaza. Others Palestinians have had their homes demolished because they did not have a building permit. Israel intentionally denies building permits to Palestinians which forces them to build illegally. If they don't they may not have a home to live in. Sometimes the building permit is just to build an addition on top of their house so they and their family member don't have to live in such crowded conditions.

Israel has recently added a cruel twist to the practice of home demolitions. Thousand of Palestinians have been ordered by the courts to demolish their own homes under pressure of heavy fined being levied against them and imprisonment. Tens of thousands of demolition orders pertaining to Palestinian homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem remain in place and can be enforced at any time. One can try to imagine what it is like to live in a home and never know weather you are going to get a visit from the army in the middle of the night telling you to vacate your home so they can demolish it.

The issue of home demolitions first came into the public eye on July 9, 1998, when the civil administration, Israel's military government in the West Bank came to demolish the home of Salim and Arabiya Shawamreh and their six children. Fortunately, Israeli and Palestinian activist were mobilized in time and as a result Israelis, diplomats and journalist were able to witness the demolition. The attention this demolition received raised global awareness of home demolitions which so many Palestinians are harmed by. Over the years several local and international NGO's including Amnesty International have highlighted the issue of home demolitions. Recent reports by OCHA and the EU have focused on the illegality of these home demolitions.

Last week, after a delay of more than two years, the Israeli supreme court ruled against the Shawamreh family's appeal to have the 17 year old demolition order rescinded. This means at any time their home can be demolished and they can be made homeless by Israeli authorities. If this happens it will be the 5th time their home has been demolished.

The court rejected their claim that Israel is violating the fourth Geneva Convention which forbids an occupying power from extending its law and administration to the territory it is occupying. Under this law Israel does not have the authority to grant or deny housing permits. But, the Israeli court does not recognize that Israel is involved in an occupation. As a result the court ruled this part of the Fourth Geneva Convention does not apply.

The family then argued that the legal basis used to justify the demolition of their home and thousands of other homes in the area of the West Bank did not hold up legally. That is because it is based on a 1942 British-era plan that designated their area as agricultural land, not taking into account the significant changes in demography and land use that have occurred. They challenged the legitimacy of this law since it is used in such a discriminatory way against Palestinians. This is evident because Israeli authorities ignore this plan when approving the many building permits for Israeli settlements in this same area. The court rejected this argument

Next, the Shawamreh family argued that there repeated and costly attempts to get a building permits were rejected for no good reason. How costly you might ask? They paid $15,000 in fees to work within a system that categorically discriminates against their group and they have little chance of finding justice in.

The Civil Administration tried to put their public relations spin on why they would not grant this family a housing permit. They first told a reporter from a newspaper that they would grant the housing permit if the Shawamreh family would provide some missing signatures on their deed of ownership. The Civil Administration would not say which signatures where required despite repeated inquiries. The Civil Administration finally claimed they lost the Shawamreh family file.

Finally, they argued their experience with the civil authorities and the courts constituted an unreasonable state of affairs in which all attempts to work within the legal framework of the system were rejected or closed off to them. After all they had demonstrated good faith by their willingness to do whatever the Israeli authorities asked of them even though it should have been illegal to treat them that way. The judge still rejected their request to have the demolition order rescinded. The judge even accused them of acting in “bad faith” or having “unclean hands because they they had rebuilt their homes four times without a permit. The nerve of them to insist on having a home to live in. To make matter worse, he fined them $2,000 for having the audacity to try to seek justice through the court system.

Article this post is based on:
icahdusa.org/2009/393