Mondoweiss
Life after demolition: Palestinian family in East Jerusalem reels after
being forced to demolish their own home
Israel/Palestine
Yumna Patelon December 17, 2018
Murad Hashimi, 38, stands amongst the rubble of his home that he lived in
for 20 years (Photo: Saleh Zghari)
The days since 38-year-old Murad Hashimi lost his home in occupied East
Jerusalem have been some of the most difficult of his life.
Not only did he lose the home he was born and raised in, but he was forced
to demolish it with his own two hands.
"When I was destroying my house, it was like I was in a daze," Hashimi told
Mondoweiss. "I couldn't think clearly. Even now, I can't think about
anything except the house."
Murad is the latest addition to the growing list of Palestinians in East
Jerusalem who have made the unbearable decision to destroy their own home.
With Israeli building permits too expensive for most Palestinians in
Jerusalem, many are forced to build their homes without a license, and thus
face the Israeli demolition order that inevitably follows.
When officials from Israel's Jerusalem Municipality served Hashimi with a
demolition order for the home he built 20 years ago, he was given two
options: demolish the house himself, or wait for Israeli forces to destroy
his home, and then pay them a demolition fee.
"The decision to destroy my house by my own hands was difficult, but I had
to do it for economic reasons," Hashimi said, adding that it was
significantly cheaper for him to tear down his own home than let the
Israelis destroy it, and incur the demolition fee.
Due to the high costs of renting demolition equipment, the Hashimi family
worked with activists to start a GoFundMe page to help alleviate the
financial burden.
"Where else in the world do you have to ask strangers for money so they can
help you demolish your home?" he asked.
"I can't describe that feeling," he said as his voice started to crack. "It
was very, very difficult. I still haven't accepted that this happened."
"With every stone that I tore down, I felt like I was destroying a piece of
my soul."
A 20 year fight
Murad Hashimi was born in the Wadi Qaddoum area of Silwan, a neighborhood in
East Jerusalem located just south of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.
He grew up with his siblings in his parents' small one-story home, that has
been around since the 1950's.
In 1998, he and his brother Juhar decided to build an extension on top of
the original family home. The new level would consist of two apartments, one
for either brother and their future families.
All that remains of the Hashimi family home is the tiny, two-room ground
floor structure that was built in the 50's (Photo: Saleh Zghari)
"We decided to build without permits because the Israelis make it very
difficult for Palestinians to get building permits," Hashimi said. "For
example you need to meet a minimum requirement of land area to get a
building permit, specific amount of area to build; but in East Jerusalem
there is a lot of overcrowding and the space we have does not meet the
Israeli requirements."
When Murad and Juhar worked out the costs of building legally, they knew it
was something they would never be able to do.
"Of course we wanted to get the proper permissions, but the cost of
obtaining the building permissions alone was more than twice what it would
have cost us to actually build the place," he said.
The brothers completed the new addition to their home in the same year they
started. The project cost them around 120,000 shekels.
Murad would go on to get married and have four children, all born and raised
in the house he built with his brother.
"From the moment we finished the house, we lived with the fear that the
Israelis would come to destroy it," he told Mondoweiss. "It's a fear all
Palestinians in Jerusalem live with."
"You know that day will come, but a small, naive part of you still has hope
that it never will."
Despite his highest hopes, that day did come for Murad just a few years
after he built the house.
Over the past 18 years, he said, he has exhausted every legal option in an
attempt to retroactively legalize his home.
"We appealed to the courts, we got engineers to prove that our building did
not violate any of the municipality's building codes, we paid thousands of
shekels for lawyers, but it was all for nothing," he said.
"Going into it, I knew that no Palestinian had ever been successful in
legalizing his home after receiving a demolition order, but I still had to
try,"
Though he could not legalize his home, Hashimi's efforts did buy him some
time with the courts.
"The demolition order was consistently delayed for a long time, and I got to
live in my home for 20 years, which is more than a lot of people here."
A few months ago, Hashimi's luck ran out. Israeli forces arrived to his home
with a final demolition notice.
"We knew it was coming, but it didn't make it any easier on us," he said.
'It's a vicious cycle'
The story of the Hashimi brothers is a familiar tale in East Jerusalem,
which is home to some 300,000 Palestinians, who have lived in the city for
generations.
When Israel illegally occupied and annexed East Jerusalem into its territory
in 1967, the Palestinians in the city were given the status of "permanent
residents" in the city, meaning that they are not citizens of any country:
neither Israel, nor the Palestinian Authority-administered West Bank.
Over the years, Israel has used a number of tactics to "Judaize" Jerusalem,
by incentivizing Jewish settlement in the city, and placing severe
restrictions on Palestinian residential or other construction in East
Jerusalem.
Israel's Jerusalem Municipality has zoned only 15% of the land in East
Jerusalem for residential use, despite the fact that Palestinians make up
40% of the city's population, leading to severe overcrowding in Palestinian
neighborhoods.
An estimated four out of five of Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem
live under the poverty line.
Coupled with extremely expensive building permits that can cost tens of
thousands of dollars, these policies have created a reality in which
Palestinians like the Hashimis have no choice but to build without permits.
According to UN documentation, at least a third of all Palestinian homes in
East Jerusalem lack an Israeli-issued building permit, placing over 100,000
Palestinians at risk of displacement.
"I know very few people in East Jerusalem who have gotten permits, but it
ended up costing them up to 450,000 shekels," Hashimi told Mondoweiss.
"It's a vicious cycle," he said, "the system is designed to work against
us."
'We will not leave Jerusalem'
Despite the cost-saving decision to demolish his home himself, Hashimi
anticipates his family will feel the financial strain for years to come.
"I still ended up paying more than 25,000 shekels ($6,630) for the cost of
all the demolition equipment," he told Mondoweiss, adding that the family
received over $2,000 from the GoFundMe page.
Between the cost of building the house, all the legal fees over the years,
and now the demolition costs, he estimates he has lost more than 200,000
shekels ($53,030).
"It will take us a really long time to recover," he said, adding that
between his brother's family and his own, 14 people - more than half of them
minors - have been displaced as a result of the demolition.
For now, Murad and Juhar are staying in the original family home on the
ground floor, which remains in tact. Their wives and children are staying
with their wives' families.
Murad Hashimi walks among the remains of his home (Photo: Saleh Zghari)
"My family is scattered in different places," Hashimi said, "we don't feel
whole when we are not together."
"The demolition has really affected my children. This is the house they grew
up in and it's the only place they've ever known," he said. In the days
after the demolition, his kids were too distressed to go to school.
With his family torn apart and his bank accounts depleted, Hashmi's future
seems bleak.
"I can't even think about planning for the future," he told Mondoweiss. "Our
whole life has been destroyed. I don't know what to do."
When asked if he would consider leaving East Jerusalem for the West Bank in
search of more affordable housing options, as many Palestinian Jerusalemites
have done over the years, Hashimi shook his head.
"No, absolutely not, I don't want to leave Jerusalem. That is what they want
us to do," he said.
"Jerusalem is the most important thing to us, we can't leave from here.
Whatever they put us through, we will never leave Jerusalem."
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