House demolition in Bethlehem
The Bethlehem Bloggers groupblog shows the reality of living under the Israeli occupation:
At 6:30am yesterday morning Israeli mounted police escorted an IDF bulldozer into Al Walaja village (2km West of Bethlehem – in the illegally occupied West Bank.) The targeted house was demolished at 7.28am.
The official reason given for the house demolition was that the house was built without the required permit from the municipality of Jerusalem, which annexed the land in 1967. Under international law the municipality has no jurisdiction over the village of Al Walaja. Under the 1949 Geneva Convention the demolition any civilian buildings in an area of military occupation is forbidden. This action is therefore a war crime.
Since the illegal annexation of the land, non of the houses built to accommodate natural population growth have been granted the required permits. The result of this discriminatory policy is that Fifty-three of the surviving Eighty-five houses in the village have been issued with demolition orders and have not been offered any compensation. Twenty-three further houses have already been demolished over the last decade.