The anatomy of a demolition

Five steps from a permit application to a rebuilt home — the machinery beneath one morning at 'Anata.

A family applies to build

In Area C and East Jerusalem, Palestinian building permits are almost never granted — planning schemes zone the land for anything but Palestinian growth. Building legally is, in practice, impossible.

The permit is denied

The family builds anyway — there is nowhere else to go. The home is now "illegal," a status manufactured by the same authority that will later demolish it.

A demolition order is issued

Orders can sit dormant for years, then be executed without warning. Families live under them indefinitely — the threat itself is a form of control.

The home is demolished

Often at dawn, with minutes to remove belongings. This is the moment Jeff Halper witnessed at 'Anata in 1998 — and the moment this book begins.

ICAHD rebuilds

Israelis, Palestinians and internationals rebuild the home together as a political act. 189 homes rebuilt — each one a refusal to accept the process above as normal.

An excess of the system, or the system itself?

Was the demolition at 'Anata an excess of the system — or the system itself?

One reading: an excess — harsh enforcement in a difficult security situation. This is the reading most visitors arrive with, and it deserves a fair hearing. The difficulty is the state's own numbers: by ICAHD's analysis, only around 1% of demolitions since 1967 cite security grounds at all. An excess implies a norm being exceeded — the evidence suggests the demolitions are the norm.

The other reading: the system — deliberate policy with a demographic purpose. This is the reading the story will argue: demolitions as one instrument in a deliberate policy of confinement, operating in the open through a planning regime whose cumulative effect is demographic. The chapters ahead assemble the evidence — the zoning maps, the permit statistics, the pattern across fifty years.

— ICAHD (icahd.org)
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