Evacuation notices for 20 families in Al-Qirmi neighbourhood
Tags: Employees of the Jerusalem municipality “department of dangerous buildings” distributed last Tuesday evacuation notices for 20 families in Al-Qirmi neighbourhood in the old city of Jerusalem, under the pretext of “dangerous buildings”. Residents of Al-Qirmi neighbourhood explained that they were surprised to see the municipality crews and employees from the Israeli water company “Gihon” along with assessors in their neighbourhood as they checked the houses and took pictures of them. The municipality crews handed evacuation notices to the families and gave them 30 days to do the necessary renovations. They also hung signs on three buildings that said “Be aware, dangerous building, stay away”; the water company employees changed two water pipelines in the area. The notice which was handed to the families said: “Notification under the Act of “Jerusalem”, “Dangerous building for the year 1980”. Address: Al-Qirmi 20-Old City, file number 700-212-2013. Talal Asmar, Abdelmutaleb Asmar, Tayseer Asmar, Mohammad Abdelmutaleb Asmar, Haitham Ismaeel Asmar, Sameer Asmar, Mohammad Karim Salaymeh, Wujdan Asmar, Laila Rashed Asmar, Mazen Asmar, Ismaeel Asmar, Taha Asmar, Younes Asmar, Maha Asmar… Based on the authorities delegated to me under article 7 of the Jerusalem law for “dangerous buildings for the year 1980”, and after the dangerous building engineer in the Jerusalem municipality said that the above mentioned building is in a dangerous condition, and is hazardous to the residents, and the above mentioned is the owner of the building or responsible for it, we request to do the following works in 30 days…The top of the door at the entrance of the building must be strengthened and fixed to eliminate any danger; the roof at the entrance of the building must also be fixed and strengthened to eliminate the falling of concrete and eliminate any danger on the residents. New cracks occurred in the buildings and residential apartments on Wednesday 11/09/2013, and the cracks and collapses are significantly increasing in the last few days which puts all of the buildings at risk of collapsing. Engineer Mazen Sandouka explained that renovation works started last Sunday in the neighbourhood where workers started strengthening the building of Al-Ja’bari to limit the day by day increasing dangers. He also explained that what is happening now is “strengthening to limit the dangers“(phase one) which will be followed by more phases that require huge budgets”. Residents of the neighbourhood pointed out that the duration of 30 days is not enough to do the necessary renovations, stressing that they would not evacuate their houses to benefit the Israeli ambitions in the area. Ibrahim Al-Ja’bari said: “I will not evacuate my house unless the municipality finds us an alternative since it is responsible for what is happening to the buildings, but they are trying to evade responsibility.” Resident Salim Wahbeh requested an alternative to their homes in the neighbourhood before talking about any evacuations. He also said that he is surprised by the duration that was given to them to renovate their homes since the renovation process will take a lot longer than a month especially that winter is about to start. Wahbeh held Gihon Company responsible for everything because of their negligence that led to the damaging of the foundations of the building in the neighbourhood as three of the company’s employees revealed that the presence of three water pipelines that have been damaged for a long time. The families of the neighbourhood sent several appeals to Palestinian officials, and official and popular institutions to stand on their side and assist them in renovating the buildings that are at risk of collapsing. The residents expressed their sorrow for the negligence towards their neighborhood for a long time while the Israeli settlement organizations took care of it by controlling its properties and renovating them in order to have settlers move in since this neighborhood is considered to be the closest to Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock.
