INTRODUCTION

More than 3,000 homes, vast areas of agricultural land and hundreds of other properties have been destroyed by the Israeli army and security forces in Israel and the Occupied Territories in the past three and a half years. Tens of thousands of men, women and children have been made homeless or have lost their livelihood. Thousands of other houses have been damaged, and tens of thousands of others are under threat of demolition, their occupants living in fear of homelessness. House demolitions are usually carried out without warning, often at night, and the occupants are forcibly evicted with no time to salvage their belongings. Often the only warning is the rumbling of the Israeli army’s US-made Caterpillar bulldozers beginning to tear down the walls of their homes. The victims are often amongst the poorest and most disadvantaged. In most cases the justification given by the Israeli authorities for the destruction is “military/security needs”, while in other cases it is the lack of building permits. The result is the same: families are left homeless and destitute, forced to rely on relatives, friends and humanitarian organizations for shelter and subsistence.

House demolition has been a long-standing policy in the Occupied Territories and in the Arab sector in Israel. However, in the past three and a half years the scale of the destruction has reached an unprecedented level. The destruction of Palestinian homes, agricultural land and other property in the Occupied Territories, is inextricably linked to Israel’s long-standing policy of appropriating as much as possible of the land it occupies, notably by establishing Israeli settlements in violation of international law. In Israel it is essentially the homes of Palestinian citizens of Israel (Israeli Arabs) which are targeted for demolition. The phenomenon is linked to the state’s policy of large-scale confiscation of land, restrictive planning regulations and discriminatory policies in the allocation of state land which makes it difficult or impossible for Israeli Arabs to obtain building permits.

This document summarizes a 65-page report: Israel and the Occupied Territories: Under the rubble: House demolition and destruction of land and property (AI Index: MDE/15/033/2004, May 2004), which analyses the main patterns and trends of forced eviction, house demolition and destruction of property by the Israeli army and security forces in Israel and the Occupied Territories in the light of international human rights and humanitarian law