Jerusalem demolishes homes for construction violations – if they’re Palestinian

A demolished home in the al-Bustan neighborhood in East Jerusalem, March 2026

Nir Hasson reports in Haaretz on 5 April 2026:

The Jerusalem municipality is demolishing Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem for alleged building violations, even in wartime and as it spares Jewish homes from the same fate for similar or more severe infractions, a Haaretz investigation reveals.

Last Monday, dozens of municipal inspectors and police officers demolished four homes in the al-Bustan section of East Jerusalem’s Silwan neighborhood. The inspectors promised to return after Passover and demolish 10 more buildings, with another 30 or so expected to be taken down later on.

This would complete the demolition of the entire neighborhood, where 35 buildings have already been demolished since the war with Hamas began on October 7, 2023.

The legal justification is that these homes were built without permits and the demolitions would clear the area for a Jewish archaeological park called the King’s Garden.

Many homes in East Jerusalem, especially in Silwan, are built without permits, but the municipality halted demolition proceedings in several cases when the building was transferred from Palestinian to Jewish ownership.

Unlike Palestinians, Jewish settlement organizations are allowed to build on the land designated for the park. For example, a few meters from al-Bustan stands a multistory building that, by all criteria, constitutes a serious construction violation. But no proceedings have been taken against this building because, according to al-Bustan residents, the upper floors are owned by the right-wing settler group Elad.

Elad also operates an events hall, a synagogue, a restaurant, a visitors’ center and even guesthouses, all in violation of the Planning and Building Law. Attorney Ziad Kawar, representing al-Bustan residents, wrote to Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Leon that a mobile home placed by Palestinians in the same location as the Elad visitors’ center was demolished by the municipality a few months after it was placed there.

Kawar also wrote about the “disappearance” of legal proceedings after buildings were transferred from Palestinian ownership to settler organizations. Near al-Bustan stand three buildings, three and five stories high, containing 17 apartments, all built without permits.

Initially, the municipality issued a demolition order for the buildings, but since the Palestinian owners, the Awad family, sold them to the Ateret Cohanim settler group, the municipality seems to have halted steps to implement the order.

Kawar’s letter details seven more cases of building violations, all linked to Elad and Ateret Cohanim, and a failure to act by the municipality. Both organizations have been operating for several decades to “Judaize” the majority Palestinian area of Silwan.

Late last month, Ateret Cohanim evicted 15 Palestinian families from the Batn al-Hawa neighborhood to accommodate its members, with municipal inspectors making their promise to demolish 10 more homes, with 30 more demolitions coming later.

The wave of Palestinian home demolitions in al-Bustan came after negotiations between neighborhood residents and the municipality broke down, with each side blaming the other.  “A relocation and redevelopment process was proposed for establishing a new and modern neighborhood for the local residents while creating a public park for the benefit of all city residents and visitors,” Kawar wrote to Leon.

Kawar blamed the municipality for the failed negotiations, writing that every time the residents’ committee “brought agreements for the proposed plan, it encountered a hardening of positions from the Jerusalem municipality and a reduction of the living space offered to the residents.”

Even though the last plan presented to the Palestinian residents allotted only 20 percent of the land for residential use and the rest for the Jewish archaeological park, 85 percent of the Palestinian residents signed in support of the plan, Kawar wrote. But in mid-February, the municipality said that no further negotiations would take place and the neighborhood would be demolished.

City council member Laura Wharton said the municipality was applying selective enforcement. “Residents of East Jerusalem, especially al-Bustan, live under a terrible and suffocating lack of plans and permits, allowing construction and a constant threat of actual demolitions,” said Wharton, who has filed more than 20 complaints about building violations by settlers in Silwan.

None have been addressed, she said. “Instead of focusing on building plans and housing solutions, the municipality operates bulldozers, spares illegal settler homes and demolishes buildings only for Palestinians,” she said.

The municipality did not respond to allegations of building violations by settlers but said that it “fulfills its role impartially and acts for the benefit of residents from all groups that make up the city’s unique urban mosaic. Claims of selective enforcement are baseless, and their presentation in the letter constitutes another attempt to ‘delay the inevitable’ in the face of enforcement against illegal construction in the neighborhood.

“The municipality has made significant efforts and acted in many ways beyond the letter of the law to find a suitable solution for the residents of the King’s Garden neighborhood, but time and again it has encountered refusal from the residents.”

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