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JERUSALEM (Ma'an) -- The Israeli municipality of Jerusalem delivered demolition notices to residential structures in the Issawiya neighborhood, on Wednesday.

Muhammad Abu al-Hummus, member of a local follow-up committee, said that joint teams from the Israeli municipality and police raided the neighborhood and delivered demolition notices, summons for 13 residential structures, under the pretext that they were built without the Israeli-issued building permits.

Abu al-Hummus pointed out that some of the notified buildings were built more than 15 years ago.

Some of the buildings were identified as belonging to the Mahmoud, Darwish, Hamdan and al-Zaatari families.

Abu al-Hummus added that the Israeli municipality inspector took footage of dozens of buildings and homes in the neighborhood.

Tensions increased in the neighborhood following the delivery of notices.

Israel uses the pretext of building without a permit to carry out demolitions of Palestinian-owned homes on a regular basis.

Israel rarely grants Palestinians permits to build in East Jerusalem, though the Jerusalem municipality has claimed that compared to the Jewish population, they receive a disproportionately low number of permit applications from Palestinian communities, which also see high approval ratings.

For Jewish Israelis in occupied East Jerusalem's illegal settlements, the planning, marketing, development, and infrastructure are funded and executed by the Israeli government. By contrast, in Palestinian neighborhoods, all the burden falls on individual families to contend with a lengthy permit application that can last several years and cost tens of thousands of dollars.