For Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, home demolitions are a constant threat. Used as a form of both collective punishment and ethnic cleansing, Israeli occupation forces routinely bulldoze and destroy the homes of Palestinian prisoners, leaving their entire families homeless. In occupied Jerusalem and in villages and agricultural areas throughout Palestine classified as “Area C,” Palestinians routinely are forced to demolish their own homes or have them forcibly destroyed by Israeli soldiers with bulldozers under various pretexts: a lack of a construction permit or proximity to the illegal apartheid wall.
Of course, Palestinians are routinely denied permits to build or even improve their homes, at the same time that illegal Israeli settlements are routinely approved, developed and funded by the Israeli regime, with 2,000 more units in the colonies announced in mid-October 2020. One of the nonviolent direct action campaigns of the International Solidarity Movement is working hand in hand with Palestinian families to aim to protect their homes from the violent racism of Israeli home demolition.
On July 22, 2019, British ISM activist Bethany Rielly was with six fellow international human rights defenders from France, Spain, China and the United States in the Wadi al-Hummus neighborhood of occupied Jerusalem as 900 occupation soldiers attacked the home of Palestinian Ismail Abadiyeh. Occupation forces kicked Palestinians down the stairs and shot two Palestinians with rubber-coated metal bullets. Bethany recalls, “A soldier dragged me by my keffiyeh across the floor strangling me until I screamed, then he crushed my neck under his knee. I was then pulled by my hair out of the room and dragged down two flights of stairs.” A fellow British activist was hospitalized along with 12 Palestinians after being severely beaten by occupation soldiers.
Bethany told the story of the home demolition that day and the attack by occupation soldiers:
“There was no-one filming in the house, no-one showing the world the brutality of the Israeli military against unarmed civilians. They had blocked off all the roads to prevent any media coming in for this very reason.
As we left I saw the Palestinian friends and family of Ismail bloodied and wide-eyed. My activist friends were outside too, red-eyed from the tear gas.
For the next hour, the soldiers walked us for a mile away from the site, laughing at us and stepping on our feet. We asked them: ‘Why are you doing this?’ ‘Will you tell your mum what you did today?”
They were smug and proud of themselves. For them, demolishing people’s homes and brutalising people is fun.
As we walked I saw Ismail. He was heartbroken. I said I was sorry but what good are words when everything you’ve been working towards for years is crushed under the occupation?
I found out later that 12 of the Palestinians had been hospitalised — two from rubber-coated steel bullet wounds fired at close range.
Chris’s rib was fractured, B’s knuckle was fractured too and her other hand suffered severe tissue damage. Gabi was rushed to hospital with agonising pepper spray burns. I have a hideous strangulation wound across my neck.
But I want to stress that our injuries are nothing. Nothing compared to the violence the Israeli state carries out every day against the Palestinian people.
They act with total impunity — shooting children, imprisoning people for years without trial, demolishing homes, water wells, olive trees — anything and everything to make life impossible for Palestinians.
Their homes are razed to the ground every week, for whatever reason, from not having an impossible-to-get building permit to being too close to a wall that’s illegal under international law. Settlers on the other hand are free to build whatever and wherever they please, even without permits.
If you are a ‘friend’ of Israel…then you are also a friend of apartheid. You are a friend of a state that kills men, women and children with impunity. And you are a friend of a perpetrator of ongoing and unrelenting ethnic cleansing.”
Bethany asks, “Is a house demolition a military operation anywhere else in the world? This is the reality of life for Palestinians living under Israeli occupation.”
Israeli home demolitions are continuing on a regular basis inside occupied Palestine. On November 3, Israeli occupation forces destroyed the community of Khirbet Humsah in the Jordan Valley, demolishing 18 sheds and tents housing 11 families, 29 livestock enclosures, confiscating tractors and destroying 30 tons of livestock feed. In Nablus, Israeli occupation forces demolished the home of Khalil Dweikat, Palestinian prisoner, on November 2, leaving his wife and daughters homeless on the rubble of their home. Despite the fact that collective punishment is clearly illegal under international law, Palestinians continue to face daily assaults on their most basic right to shelter and a continuing Nakba that aims to push them from their land.
Bethany Rielly and her fellow internationals in Sur Baher that day continue to urge internationals to go to Palestine and support the ongoing civil, popular resistance of Palestinians aiming to remain on their land and in their homes.
The International Solidarity Movement is a Palestinian-led movement committed to resisting the long-entrenched and systematic oppression and dispossession of the Palestinian population, using non-violent, direct-action methods and principles. At ISM NorCal, we support the work of ISM in Palestine and help to bring volunteers to join the work on the ground in Palestine. Contact us at ism-norcal.org to learn more about how you can stand alongside Palestinians confronting the daily violence of occupation.