Silwan: Occupation court decides to demolish two apartments
The occupation municipality’s court decided on Sunday to demolish two residential apartments in the neighborhood of Bi’er Ayoub in Silwan under the pretext of building without a permit. Daoud Abdelrazzak Siam explained that the judge at the municipality’s court decided during a session held on Sunday the self-demolition of two residential apartments that were built without a permit; the apartments were built in 1994 (i.e. 21 years ago). Siam added that the two apartments are the third and fourth floors in a 5-storey building. They are owned by his brothers Ayoub and Maher. Siam pointed out that 13 individuals live in the two apartments including 8 children (Ayoub, his wife and their 8 children; and Maher and his sister and her son). Each apartment is 130 square meters. Daoud Siam added that according to the decision if the self-demolition is not executed with two weeks, actual imprisonment for 4 months will be imposed on him in addition to fine and eventually paying the demolition costs to the municipality which will exceed 200 thousand NIS. Siam explained that the two apartments were built before the occupation of Jerusalem and building violation fees were imposed on the family during the past years adding to more than 600 thousand NIS. The family attempted to obtain a building permit from the municipality and paid 400 thousand NIS to engineers and lawyer to prevent the demolition but the municipality insisted on refusing to license the apartments under the pretext of allocating the area for building parks. Siam pointed out that the municipality imposed a 24-thousand NIS fine on him for the fifth floor and gave him a year and a half to obtain a building permit; note that his apartment is built since 2009 where 8 individuals live including 6 children.
