Israeli government to discuss plan to demolish thousands of Arab buildings

Arab48 obtained information that the Israeli government is planned to discuss, during its weekly session on Sunday, a plan to implement demolition orders in Arab towns.

Likud ministers, Ze’ev Elkin and Yariv Levin presented a comprehensive plan to the government “to implement the organisational and building laws”, which mainly target Arab towns that have tens of thousands of unlicensed homes. A number of academic studies conducted on the issue of unlicensed construction in the Arab towns have confirmed that the situation is a result of the Israeli government’s policies against the Arab community.

This proposal has come days after Israeli Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon announced that the five year plan to upgrade Arab towns has been frozen due to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s insistence on “implementing construction law”, according to him, i.e. executing the demolition orders in the Arab towns.

The plan aims to speed up the implementation of the demolition orders and achieving the process of issuing demolition orders in the courts in order to issue and implement them quicker, as well as allotting budgets to fund police and demolition forces.