NOVANEWS
Israel’s demolition of Palestinian homes continues
December 31, 2010
by Michael Leon
by Michael Leon
Happy New Year, World! Israel’s U.S.-abetted crime continues.
Israel’s demolition of Palestinian homes continued in Lyd, the Negev region, and in numerous places around the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem where two Palestinian families were forced to demolish their own homes in Sur Bahir village. The families had received demolition orders from Jerusalem Municipality officials three days before, citing “illegal construction.
From the Electronic Intifada
More than 100 Palestinian protesters and their supporters blocked a main street in the city of Lyd on 28 December, demonstrating against the recent demolition of Palestinian homes and what residents say is a rise in racism and police brutality.
On 13 December, officials with the Israel Lands Administration (ILA), the government agency that manages and leases state land, entered the Palestinian section of the segregated city flanked by bulldozers and hundreds of municipal, riot squad and border police forces. The bulldozers then demolished seven homes all belonging to the Abu Eid family in Lyd.
The demolition, which took several hours, subsequently displaced 67 members of the entire family, including dozens of children, during one of the worst rainstorms of the season. Dozens of other Palestinian homes have been demolished over the years in Lyd, which is a few miles east of Tel Aviv inside the state of Israel.
Lyd is a so-called “mixed city,” as is the neighboring city of Ramle, with significant Palestinian minority communities living alongside the Jewish majority. Palestinian residents of these communities have been chronically discriminated against and brutalized by police.
Oren Ziv, a photojournalist with Israeli-based photography collective ActiveStills, witnessed the demolitions of the Abu Eid homes and told The Electronic Intifada that the family knew that the ILA had issued demolition orders against their homes, but they were given no notice of exactly when the destruction would take place.
“During the destruction, I climbed onto the roof of a neighboring house and I saw several bulldozers demolishing the fourth house,” Ziv said. “Many neighbors and a few activists were watching it all happen. I’ve been documenting [home demolitions] for seven years and this was one of the biggest demolitions I’ve ever seen.”
This Time We Went Too Far – By Norman G. Finkelstein
Veterans Today recommends Norman G. Finkelstein’s brilliant and powerful ‘This Time We Went Too Far,’ a shocking, rigorously researched book chronicling the “December 2008 Israeli invasion nightmare of unimaginable proportions” that left 1,400 Gazans killed, 6,000 homes destroyed or badly damaged, and … in one of the world’s poorest areas … destruction and disruption of economic life … estimated at more than $3 billion.”
“Better than any other book, ‘This Time We Went Too Far’ shows how the massive destruction visited on Gaza was not an accidental byproduct of the Israeli invasion but its barely concealed objective.” — Raja Shehadeh, author, Palestinian Walks