Salfit residents fear for their homes and livelihoods as dozens of buildings threatened
Jerusalem24 – Shaden Hazeem and Noelle Mafarjeh – The Israeli military delivered last week a total 24 stop-work orders to buildings under construction in the village of Al-Zawiya west of Salfit in the occupied West Bank.
The buildings include a mosque and several inhabited houses.
According to mayor of Al-Zawiya Mohammad Raddad, four families are living in the targeted houses including one resident who has lived in his house for over six years.
Raddad tells Jerusalem24 that this is the second time in just over a month that the village has been targeted by stop-work orders.
On 6 March, he says, “Israeli authorities delivered 14 orders to stop work and construction to different building in the Western area of the town.” The buildings include three residential houses as well as 11 agricultural structures. 81% of Al-Zawiya’s 5,000-strong population depends on agriculture and sheep grazing.
According to Raddad, a majority of the buildings targeted are in “the final stages” of construction. He also mentions that the construction of the mosque was undertaken using donations from residents.
In 2016, when the Al-Zawiya municipality began constructing a new road for residents to access part of their lands, Israeli authorities also issued a stop-work order against the road, and “threatened the contractor and workers with arrest in case they kept on working”, according to then-mayor Na’im Shuqair.
All of the targeted structures in Al-Zawiya are in Area C, the area of the occupied West Bank which falls under full Israeli military and civil control as per the Oslo Accords.
Salfit governor Abdullah Kamil told Maan News Agency last week that the continuous distribution of stop-work orders is an “unjust policy” against Palestinians that amounts to “ethnic cleansing”.
Tens of thousands of Palestinian-built structures are currently under threat of fines or demolition by Israeli authorities across the occupied West Bank including East Jerusalem.
Israel says the buildings are targeted for lacking an Israeli-issued building permit, but Palestinians point out that the permits are quasi-impossible for them to obtain, and that the stop-work orders and demolitions are just a pretext to enable further land-grab by the Israeli government and settlers.
According to OCHA data, 91% of all demolitions take place within a radius of 3km of illegal Israeli settlements.
“A massacre of demolitions”
OCHA has recorded a 42% increase in demolition rates since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s extreme-right administration came into office on 29 December.
Israel has destroyed 293 structures since then (including 43 international donor-funded structures), displacing 425 Palestinians and affecting over 11,000 through a loss of livelihood, dwellings, or WASH facilities or other infrastructure.
Far-right extremist and Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir promised earlier this year to especially increase the rate of demolitions in occupied East Jerusalem, and requested in February an exhaustive list of buildings currently slated for demolition by the Israeli Jerusalem municipality.
Director of the Jerusalem Center for Social and Economic Rights Ziad Hammouri told Jerusalem24 that under Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir, and Smotrich’s extreme right-wing administration, Palestinians can expect to face “a massacre of house demolitions”.
