An apartment belonging to a Palestinian resident of Jaffa in Israel was destroyed by Tel Aviv municipal authorities on 17 January.
In 2001, Moussa Dakka, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, built a 75-metre housing unit on the roof of his parents’ house in the Pardess Dakka neighbourhood in Jaffa, south of Tel Aviv.
A demolition order was placed on the housing unit, but the Tel Aviv District Court ruled that it should not be enforced until the municipal planning of the neighbourhood was finalised.
The Jaffa-Tel Aviv municipality has consistently refused to draw up plans for development in this neighbourhood, so that its residents are not able to obtain building permits at all.
The Tel Aviv municipality appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court, which reversed the District Court ruling and allowed the demolition of the unit.
According to Attorney Auni Banna of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), the past year has seen an increase in the number of municipal house demolitions inside Israel, mainly in Arab towns and in Arab neighbourhoods in mixed towns.
“The demolition of this home is a direct result of the lack of an urban plan for this neighbourhood,” said Banna. “The municipality was acting illegally by denying residents the possibility of building.”
This article may be reproduced on condition that JNews is quoted as its source.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
