Pictures- A Jerusalemite demolishes parts of his homes in Silwan
On Wednesday, Siam family started demolishing the additions of 3 houses in the neighborhood of Wadi Hilweh in Silwan, on the pretext of building without a permit.
Wadi Hilweh Information Center/ Silwan stated that Siam family demolished additions to their homes with a total area of about 240 square meters, in order to avoid paying financial fines that the occupation municipality threatened to impose on them in the event of not carrying out the demolition until the end of this week.
Nasser Siam stated that he added building on the family’s existing homes for more than 90 years, and completed the construction process at the beginning of this year, pointing out that each house has an addition of about 80 square meters, and his two sons Khaled and Majd moved to live in them and fully prepared them, while he and his family of 6 live in the third house.
Siam added that the family expanded the existing houses due to the small size of the old building, but the municipality started pursuing them after the completion of the construction by issuing demolition decisions, threatening to implement the demolition, and imposing financial fines, which forced the family to self-demolish them.
Nasser Siam said: "The municipality refused to freeze the demolition and carry out construction licensing procedures, and issued a self-demolition decision. Otherwise, its staff will implement the decision and the family will pay the demolition fees to the municipality crews, bulldozers and police forces, and may reach 150,000 shekels."
Siam added: "Despite the difficulty of self-demolition, I implemented it in order to avoid paying the fines on one hand, and not to harm the old building on the other hand."
