Israel forces injure Palestinian brothers during home demolition

Two Palestinian brothers were injured by Israeli forces yesterday during the demolition of their family’s apartment which was under-construction in occupied East Jerusalem.

According to Haaretz, Israeli occupation forces yesterday arrived to carry out the demolition of the Khalil family’s apartment, which had been built without an almost impossible to obtain permit from the Jerusalem municipality.

A video of the demolition raid shows Israeli border policemen assaulting two brothers, Issa and Kusai Khalil, who both needed medical treatment.

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According to the paper, “police detained the brothers and later released them on condition they do not enter Jerusalem during the next two days”.

Mohammed Khalil, the owner of the house, told Haaretz “he had built the apartment as a second story above his home for his son Issa, who had married recently. Khalil said there was no way to get a permit to build the home legally.”

“They gave me a demolition order for the house and told me to demolish only the roof, which I did yesterday on my own,” he said. “Today they came and said that wasn’t enough; we had to demolish the entire house.”

They brought all these soldiers and started to push us; you can’t even look up, whoever looks at them gets yelled at.

“I barely managed to build this house from everything I worked for all my life. Now everything is gone,” Mohammed added.

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Researcher Aviv Tatarsky, from the Ir Amim non-profit, told Haaretz: “The Jerusalem municipality is not advancing proper master plans for the city’s Palestinian neighbourhoods.”

“Since the beginning of the year the municipality has progressed planning permissions for 12,000 housing units in the Israeli neighbourhoods, and 1,500 units in the Palestinian neighbourhoods.”

“Because of this discrimination residents of East Jerusalem are forced to build without permits.”