Israel Ramps Up Demolitions of Palestinian Homes Ahead of Fall Elections |
Struggle and Solidarity: Writing Toward Palestinian Liberation
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East Jerusalem is days away from its largest forced displacement since 1967.
Eight Palestinian homes are set to be demolished by the end of May — the highest number in a single month, according to the Israeli nonprofit Ir Amim since it began tracking such demolitions.
“Soon, these will all be gone,” said Fakhri Abu Diab, a longtime East Jerusalem activist whose own home was demolished in 2024, gesturing at the homes lining the valley walls. “They will be taken by settlers or destroyed, and then we will have nowhere to go.”
The eight families had engaged in a protracted legal struggle to fight the orders, but as Ir Amim international outreach coordinator Tess Miller confirmed, “there is no longer any legal process underway that could stop the demolitions. All potential legal remedies have been exhausted.”
The legal framework driving the demolitions relies on two laws. The first is the Legal and Administrative Matters Law, which came into force in 1970. The law holds that Jewish families or property owners who lost property, often due to anti-Jewish pogroms in Jerusalem before the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, are entitled to petition the state to reclaim title to such property.
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Palestinians forcibly expelled during the 1948 war have no equivalent right under Israeli law to return or reclaim lost property.
Ateret Cohanim and Elad, two settler nonprofits, rely on this law and a defunct land trust to assert their claim. They have waged a decades-long legal campaign to displace families from homes and land that the families, in most cases, legally purchased under Israeli law.
The settler nonprofits “don’t care what the world says. For them, the world is against us; we are strong enough,” said Hagit Ofran. Ofran directs Peace Now’s Settlement Watch project and, according to Haaretz, may know more about the scope of settlement construction than any person alive.
The second legal mechanism is Jerusalem’s planning and zoning commission, which urban planners and legal advocates say has made it almost impossible for Palestinian families to build legally on land they own.
According to Bimkom, an Israeli planning-rights nonprofit, Israeli authorities approved only around 600 housing units for Palestinians in East Jerusalem in 2025, compared to approximately 9,000 units allocated to Jewish residents.
Many families priced out of the Jerusalem housing market by the severe shortage caused by these zoning restrictions and unable to build on their........