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Thousands protest in Kalansua against house demolitions, January 13, 2016. Credit: Courtesy Published by Haaretz

Israeli officials demolished 11 buildings put up without proper permits in the Israeli Arab city of Kalansua. January 10, 2017. Credit: Moti Milrod
Published by Maan News
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ACRE (Ma'an) -- Dozens participated in a protest Saturday in support of residents of the Israeli city of Qalansawe, whose homes were demolished by Israeli forces earlier this week.

On Tuesday, Israeli forces demolished 11 homes belonging to Palestinian citizens of Israel for lacking Israel-issued construction permits, in what Amnesty International Israel said amounted to possible human rights violations, accusing Israeli forces of acting on “political motives.”

Saturday’s demonstration was held at the crossroads between the northern Israeli town of Kafr Yasif and the al-Ayathiyya neighborhood, and was organized by Israel’s left-wing political bloc Hadash and the Israeli Communist Party (Maki).

Participants carried posters slamming Israel's policy of home demolitions and called for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's “racist government" to be toppled.

Demonstrators stressed that Palestinian citizens of Israel do not want to build homes without licences, but are forced to "due to the racist policies of consecutive Israeli governments,” in which master plans for Palestinian communities “are never approved.”

Protesters expressed solidarity with the families whose homes were demolished with only one day’s advance warning, and affirmed that protests against Israel’s systematic targeting of Palestinian citizens of Israel with home demolitions would continue “through every available means.”

On Friday, a thousands of Palestinian citizens and supporters took to the streets in Israel to protest against the demolitions, which they claimed was a systematic policy by Israeli authorities to tear apart Palestinian communities in Israel in order to pressure them to leave the region.

The day following the demolitions, Palestinian citizens declared a general strike across Israel, which included protests in dozens of Palestinian-majority towns and at least half a million Palestinians participating in the strike.

Due to the planning failures in the region, which necessitates that any building plans be approved on the regional rather than local level, Palestinians in Qalansawe and other areas dominated by Palestinian citizens have been forced to build without proper permission from Israeli authorities in order to accommodate an increasing population.

Amnesty International Israel called the demolitions in Qalansawe “politically unacceptable,” and noted that the Israeli planning authorities in the region have been dysfunctional for decades.

However, the mass demolition campaign on Tuesday was “almost unprecedented.”

Despite receiving the demolition orders only a day before the demolitions were carried out, the demolition notices were dated on Dec. 20, a move which the group said was designed to prevent the residents of Qalansawe from appealing the demolition orders.

Residents, however, quickly responded to the demolition notices the day before and began legal proceedings against them. But Israeli forces demolished the homes anyway, despite the right of residents to appeal such decisions.

The demolition campaign came after the Israeli prime minister has vowed to escalate demolitions of Palestinian communities in Israel in retaliation to an Israeli Supreme Court decision to demolish the illegal Israeli settler outpost of Amona in the occupied West Bank, which was built on privately-owned Palestinian land in contravention of both international and domestic Israeli law.

Meanwhile, according to Palestinian NGO Adalah, only 4.6 percent of the housing tenders published by the Israel Land Authority (ILA) in 2015 were dedicated to Palestinian communities in Israel, although the population comprises 20 percent of the population.

The Palestinian population in Israel requires 13,000 new housing units per year, yet in practice only 7,000 housing units are built, mostly by means of private, self-construction, according to the group.“

As a result of the government's widespread failure to authorize a sufficient number of building permits in Arab communities, the phenomenon of ‘illegal’ home construction is widespread as residents seek to house expanding populations,” Adalah has said.

“The housing shortage in Arab communities in Israel is not the result of specific failures or unintentional neglect on the part of state authorities. It is instead the product of a systematic and deliberate policy since 1948 that has viewed Palestinian citizens as enemies and aliens.”
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Thousands Rally in Israeli Arab Town After State Demolishes Homes

City mayor says Israeli bureaucratic obstructionism forces the country's Arab population to build their homed illegally.

by Jack Khoury for Haaretz
Jan 13, 2017 6:28 PM

Thousands of people took to the streets of Kalansua on Friday to protest against house demolitions in the Arab city, which is located in central Israel.

Eleven buildings in the city were demolished by treasury officials and police on Tuesday, on the ground that they were erected without the appropriate permits.

The four local families who owned the buildings said they had been notified of the demolitions only two days before they were carried out and were not given sufficient time to respond through legal channels. The structures were built on land designated for farming.

Kalansua Mayor Abdel Bassat Salameh announced his resignation in the wake of the demolitions. He said he had fought for years to expand Kalansua’s master plan, but bureaucratic obstacles left the residents with no choice but to build on land zoned for agriculture.

The owners of the buildings, some of which were in the final stages of construction, said they were building on their own private land. Abu Khaled Arar, whose sons owned some of the demolished buildings, told Haaretz that he had moved from the Negev after his land there was expropriated for construction of an airfield. He then bought land in the Kalansua area.

The protesters included Knesset members, local authority heads and the heads of the Israeli Arab community's monitoring committee.

Hussam Mahlouf, who owned one of the demolished buildings, addressed the crowd in the name of all the owners. "We will remain here, on our land, and no one will move us from here," he said. "They can demolish the buildings but they can't demolish our souls."

Friday's protest began in the early afternoon with a march than began in the center of the city and ended at the site where three of the buildings were demolished. A municipality initiative to establish a special fund for the rebuilding of the houses was announced during Friday prayers at mosques throughout the country.

Mayor Salameh told the protesters that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may have ordered the demolitions, but he unwillingly assisted in unifying the Arab population of Israel.

Mohammad Barakeh, Chairman of the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee, said the rally was "a message to the government that the Arab public will not remain apathetic while it destroys homes. I suspect that the government wants to create not only a spectacle of ruins, but a spectacle of blood, as well. I call on it not to force the deterioration of the situation due to its whims and despair. We will fight for our homes, for our very existence, and we will rebuild the homes."

Taibe Mayor Shua Mansour, speaking on behalf of the Arab local authorities, said: "There is a law that it not written in the law books of Israel and that is the law of shame. The prime minister should be ashamed of what he is doing. We want to live in peace and as good neighbors, but such behavior only destroys coexistence."
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by Amnesty International
January 12, 2017

the area destroyed homes and blocked access to the scene of violence, so that residents and human rights teams described secretary closed military zone ". Such misconduct increases the concern about human rights violations and to conceal illegal conduct . Getting masse indicates the pre-planning of the operation, and the arrival in this manner without proper warning and without a proper warrant reminiscent of dark regimes.

Also there is fear that drives it politically unacceptable brought the very existence of the operation to the destruction of houses, despite the recognition of the dysfunction of the planning authorities in the region for decades . No one questions the right of state planning, but the demolition orders were posted on homes just a day before the demolition, but bore the date of 20 December, which raises alarming questions about the way in which the authorities. Even if the court decided not to intervene or authorize the destruction of homes, residents were not given a real chance to appeal in time.

Qalansuwa residents are very experienced controversy about the construction according to law, because the planning commission is not local but regional and master plans for building stuck there for many years. Despite the recognition that many factors by state authorities, it seems that it was decided to demolish the buildings massive operation no matter what . Residents will not be enough time to appeal the decision, appeal to the courts and to exhaust the usual legal procedure in this case. However, residents were quick to litigate the matter immediately - and destruction yet materialized. Due to ongoing planning failure mentioned above and the natural growth of the population, residents Qalansuwa forced to build without a permit residential buildings. For many years this was handled administratively, residents have paid fines and dealt with the subject in other ways. The decision to conduct the operation in buildings destroyed almost unprecedented in the region, despite the failures of planning and unannounced raise concern illegal conduct improper political motives .

Hilal Allouch, head of the campaign of discrimination at Amnesty International in Israel said: "The decision to destroy without warning the homes of 11 families, some of whom were left homeless and preventing a real opportunity to turn to the courts against a decision of an administrative body subject to judicial review indicate that the government is deliberately ignoring its obligation to offer an alternative to citizens suffering from the lack of deliberate planning and duty to provide a temporary solution for the victims. Netanyahu-led government and led by the Minister Erdan run like last offenders, working out of political considerations at the expense of Palestinian citizens of Israel. Have to stop this madness. "

Amnesty International calls on the ministers Moshe Kahlon and Aryeh Deri immediately stop the destruction of buildings in the Unnamed Hitr" Arab communities and their commitment to stand in front of the leadership of the Arab public.