An Israeli wrecking crew knocked down Shadi Hamdan’s home in an Arab
neighborhood of occupied Jerusalem in just a couple of hours, reducing
the upholsterer’s savings to a pile of gray rubble. {mosimage}

The demolition of the home vividly illustrates the
toughest issue facing negotiators in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks:
occupied Beit-ul-Moqaddas.

Israel claims the house was
illegally built, although Israel’s occupation and subsequent annexation
of Arab Beit-ul-Moqaddas is what is considered illegal according to the
international community.

Agreeing on how to divide the
ancient city is on the table but has yet to be resolved in talks
launched at a U.S.-hosted Mideast peace conference last November. The
Palestinians want to establish a capital in east Beit-ul-Moqaddas,
captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast War. Israel claims the whole
city but has signaled willingness to cede some Arab neighborhoods.

 Israel’s
policies in the past 40 years have caused great demographic changes to
occupied city, now home to 476,000 Jews and 250,000 Palestinians.

Since
2004, Israel has leveled more than 300 Palestinian homes in
Beit-ul-Moqaddas’s Arab neighborhoods, citing a lack of building
permits. However, critics say the permits are virtually impossible to
obtain and consider the demolitions part of a decades-old policy to
limit Palestinian population growth in city illegally occupied by
Israel.

Rabbi Arik Ascherman of Rabbis for Human
Rights, a group that fights home demolitions, says Israel is violating
the human rights of the city’s Palestinian residents by tearing down
their homes. 

“Were Israelis and Palestinians to have an
equal chance to get a building permit … it wouldn’t be a human rights
issue,” said Ascherman. “It’s a human rights issue because it’s
intentional and purposeful housing discrimination.”

Hamdan’s
case is especially harsh — his home was destroyed once before, though
he lives in an outlying area, Anata, that is among those most likely to
become part of a future Palestine in the event of a peace deal.

 Already,
Anata is cut off from the center of Beit-ul-Moqaddas by Israel’s West
Bank separation barrier, dubbed by its critics as the “Apartheid Wall”.

The
single-story structure was first knocked down in 2005 but volunteers
rebuilt it over two weeks last summer. Former Beit-ul-Moqaddas city
council member Meir Margalit, one of Hamdan’s supporters, said his
group won’t be deterred and plans to rebuild again. 

On
Wednesday, a crane-mounted jackhammer tore down Hamdan’s home — two
apartments on 1,560 square feet, one for him and one for his parents,
60-year-old Naziha and 70-year-old Hassan. The wrecking crew was
guarded by Israeli police, and one Israeli activist was briefly
detained for trying to block the demolition.

“I felt my
heart would explode,” Naziha Hamdan said of watching her house being
wrecked. Hamdan, a 30-year-old bachelor, said he’d sleep at his
workshop from now on, while his parents would move in with his brother.
A small truck arrived to cart off the family’s belongings, including a
sofa, fridge and window frames.

Hamdan’s lawyer, Sami
Ershied, said the family applied repeatedly for permission to build on
its land in Anata, but was always turned town on grounds that Anata
doesn’t have a master plan, and without one, permits cannot be issued. 

Demolition orders are currently pending against several other Anata houses, he said.

Across Arab east Beit-ul-Moqaddas, thousands of Palestinian residents live in fear of demolition, said Margalit. 

Israel
tries to portray demolitions as a technical matter, an attempt that
does not convince the rest of the word that does not recognize the
Israel’s illegal control of Beit-ul-Moqaddas.