AL-QUDS (AP) – Ratib Matar’s family was growing. They needed more space.
Before his granddaughters, now 4 and 5, were born, he built three apartments on an eastern slope overlooking Al-Quds’ ancient landscape. The 50-year-old construction contractor moved in with his brother, son, divorced daughter and their young kids — 11 people in all, plus a few geese.
But Matar was never at ease. At any moment, the Zionist regime’s code-enforcement officers could knock on his door and take everything away.
That moment came on Jan. 29, days after a Palestinian gunman killed seven people in east Al-Quds in a retaliatory attack. The occupying regime’s new far-right mnister Itamar Ben-Gvir called not only for the sealing of the assailant’s family home, but also the immediate demolition of dozens of Palestinian homes built without permits in east Al-Quds, among other punitive steps.
Mere hours after Ben-Gvir’s comments, the first bulldozers rumbled into Matar’s neighborhood of Jabal Mukaber.
For many Palestinians, the gathering pace of home demolitions is part of the new extremist cabinet’s broader battle for control of east Al-Quds, occupied by the Zionist regime in the 1967 Mideast war and claimed by the Palestinians as the capital of their future independent state.
The battle is waged with building permits and demolition orders. The Zionist regime says it is simply enforcing building regulations.
“Our construction is under siege from Israel,” Matar said. His brothers and sons lingered beside the ruins of their home, drinking bitter coffee and receiving visitors as though in mourning. “We try really hard to build, but in vain,” he said.
Last month, the occupying regime demolished 39 Palestinian homes, structures and businesses in east Al-Quds, displacing over 50 people, according to the United Nations. That was more than a quarter of the total number of demolitions in 2022. Ben-Gvir posted a photo on Twitter of the bulldozers clawing at Matar’s home.
Most Palestinian apartments in east Al-Quds were built without hard-to-get permits. A 2017 study by the UN described it as “virtually impossible” to secure them.
The occupying regime’s municipality allocates scant land for Palestinian development, the report said, while facilitating the expansion of Israeli settlements. Little Palestinian property was registered before the occupying regime annexed east Al-Quds in 1967, a move not internationally recognized.
Matar said the city rejected his building permit application twice because his area is not zoned for residential development. He’s now trying a third time.
The penalty for unauthorized building is often demolition. If families don’t tear their houses down themselves, the regime charges them for the job. Matar is dreading his bill — he knows neighbors who paid over $20,000 to have their houses razed.
Now homeless, Matar and his family are staying with relatives. He vows to build again on land he inherited from his grandparents, though he has no faith in the occupying regime’s so-called legal system.
“They don’t want a single Palestinian in all of Al-Quds,” Matar said.