– by Awdah Hathaleen – 27/6/2023

This article was first published in Humans of Masafer Yatta and we are grateful to share it here with the permission of the author. He is an activist and community advocate from the village of Um al-Khair in Area C of the occupied West Bank.

Last Sunday, when I was on my way home from work, everything seemed normal. But within a few seconds, the calm transformed into a state of great fear and anxiety.

I was entering my village when I saw an Israeli Civil Administration vehicle accompanied by a military vehicle, full of occupation soldiers, entering my village of Umm al-Khair. My first thought was:  “Who is about to become homeless?”

 Because when the Civil Administration enters the village, it can only be for two reasons. 

The Civil Administration car and army vehicle stopped in front of my family’s house. You cannot describe the feelings of the people. Everyone was standing in front of their house with tears about to fall from their eyes, and everyone was expecting that it was their house that was receiving the demolition notice. The Civil Administration officer got out of the car. All eyes were on him and where he was going. He took several steps to reach the front of our house and did not speak to anyone. I started asking him many questions, but he did not answer anything. My mother was also screaming loudly and asking him, “Why all this violence?” and “Why all this racism?”, but he did not say anything, despite understanding Arabic. He gave our house a demolition notice for just two weeks from now, by July 7th. 

The officer claimed he was done, but this was a lie. He immediately went to the next house, the house of my brother, to deliver the next demolition order. His young daughters were crying and asking why this was happening. 

The terrifying scene continued for several more minutes, as they went and gave demolition notices for several other houses. They tried to make the residents feel that they were not human.

The inevitable result of all this will be the demolition of these houses as their owners and dwellers watch with their own eyes.

My own home has been demolished three times in my life. Every single house in my village has been demolished more than once. These demolition notices are the last step before demolishing homes. We can appeal, but this process is very expensive and never fully successful— at best, the process is delayed for a year or two.  

These continuous attacks on the indigenous population, their lands and their homes are increasing significantly, and the clear goal of all this is to force the population to leave their lands. They demolish our homes because they want to kill our hope.

The Civil Administration requires the residents to obtain a building permit, but they are the very ones who would issue these permits, and they rarely give these permits to Palestinians. Are we supposed to receive justice from the very entity who destroys our homes?