Forcible Self-Demolition of One’s Home: A Lifelong Trauma for the Whole Family

Ahmed al-Qanbar, 29, a Palestinian resident from East Jerusalem’s Jabal Mukabbir neighborhood, was forced to demolish his own home on July 20, 2024.

“It is impossible to find the appropriate and accurate words that can describe the feeling of a person forced to demolish his home with his own hands,” Ahmed said.1 “This feeling is equivalent to, if not harsher than, the feeling of losing a dear loved one.”

Ahmed, who has four children, tried to describe the suffering and pain that accompanied him as he demolished, with the help of relatives, his home, including the simple rooms that he had added to accommodate the needs of his growing family.

Although some time has passed since the demolition took place, he trembles every time he looks at the rubble of his home that was once filled with love and dreams. This simple house, which can’t be considered a home by human and engineering standards, was everything to him and his family.

Ahmed told Jerusalem Story that his suffering did not end with the demolition of his home.

“We had been living here since before the occupation of Jerusalem in 1967. This home was a cave inhabited by my grandfather before my father built the house in which I was born,” Ahmed said. “We have been subjected to a lot of harassment by the settlers who settled nearby. They are the ones who are pushing the Israeli municipality against us, because they want to seize our land.”

Since 1995, Ahmed and his family have been trying to obtain a building permit from the Israeli authorities, which has cost them a huge amount of money. Despite their efforts, the permit was never approved. “This is an occupation policy, the goal of which is for you to leave this land, and they have destroyed all my dreams by demolishing this house that cost me nearly $100,000 and in which I have been living for eight years,” Ahmed explained.

Over the past several months, and specifically since the municipality’s last decision that was issued in June 2023 regarding Ahmed’s home, police from the nearby station had been calling Ahmed and saying: “We will demolish your house soon! It would be better for you to demolish it yourself.”

Ahmed concluded his conversation while looking at the piles of cement and iron that were once the home that he lived in with his children. “What I fear most is that my children will hate me because I destroyed their lives and dreams with the same hands that built the house and their dreams,” he said.

The father of four put his hands together and said: “God is sufficient for us, and He is the best disposer of affairs.” This phrase is usually uttered by Muslims in the most extreme cases of helplessness where one is unable to do anything to change the circumstances. The reality is that Ahmed along with tens of thousands of Jerusalemites live in a city which is no longer, according to international engineering standards, a comprehensive and spacious city. Instead, it has become comprised of isolated neighborhoods divided by wide streets and some settlement outposts here and there.

Head of the Jerusalem Center for Social and Economic Rights (JCSER) Ziad Hammouri told Jerusalem Story that since October 2023, more than 120 facilities have been destroyed through self-demolition, including 36 residential apartments and 34 nonresidential facilities, on the pretext of the owner not having obtained the necessary building permits. The restrictive and unfair Israeli planning system makes obtaining building permits nearly impossible for Palestinians in Jerusalem. No more than 13 percent of the area of East Jerusalem is allocated for Palestinian construction, but most of this area is already inhabited.2

Additionally, Palestinians who build their homes without attaining permits are at risk, not only of demolition but also other penalties, such as fines levied on top of the steep costs of applying for a building permit. About one-third of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem don’t have Israeli-issued building permits, which places more than 100,000 Palestinians at risk of displacement.3

Ziad described the self-demolition process as extremely destructive for Palestinian families. “The invention of the self-demolition penalty is the most difficult penalty that causes destructive psychological effects on the father who works hard throughout his life to provide shelter for his family and a safe haven for his children,” he said.4

A father appears to his family as a criminal after he demolishes their home and displaces his family with his own hands, escaping the economic and financial problems that could result from the taxes that will arise from having the Israeli authorities demolish the home instead. Children will not understand that their father avoided paying high taxes and fines and was forced to demolish his home for specific reasons. Children will likely think that their father erased their childhood memories and destroyed their personal space, such as their bedroom and toys. The self-demolition process may also greatly impact the father himself, who will continue to suffer until the final days of his life.

“The one who invented this penalty [of self-demolition] aims to inflict psychological and moral harm on every Palestinian family in Jerusalem until the furthest limits and in the harshest images,” Ziad said.

Social media has recently been filled with images of Jerusalemites bringing bulldozers to demolish their homes themselves; it has become a phenomenon that everyone in Jerusalem is discussing. This act, which no sane mind outside the borders of Jerusalem can accept, is carried out by Jerusalemites to prevent the Jerusalem Municipality from executing this brutal and inhuman action themselves.

Another self-demolition operation will soon occur in Jerusalem’s Silwan area. A Silwan resident is set to demolish his home in the al-Tur neighborhood in about a week. He has asked journalists to cover the inhumane operation and reveal the suffering that Jerusalem is experiencing.

Forcing someone to demolish their own home is certainly unusual to the rest of the world; however, in East Jerusalem, it has become part of the daily nightmare that Palestinians experience.