In pictures: The demolition of a residential building for Ghazzawi family in Al-Tur that was established 17 years ago
The Jerusalem municipality’s bulldozers demolished on Monday morning a residential building in the area of Al-Sahel in Al-Tur east of the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem under the pretext of building without a permit. The building is owned by Tawfiq Ghazzawi and his brother Ayed and consists of two apartments with a total area of 400 square meters and a 20-sqaure meter storage. The municipality executed the demolition without prior notice and did not allow the families to take out their furniture. Ghazzawi family explained that the building had been established since 1997 and consists of two apartments where each apartment has four bedrooms, a living room and its facilities. Tawfiq lived in one of the apartments and he has five children where the oldest is 16 and the youngest is one while his brother Ayed lived in the other apartment and has six children where the oldest is 15 and the youngest six months; note that their mother lived with them. The family added that the municipality demolished a storage used to store air conditioning equipment and they estimated their losses to exceed 150 thousand NIS. They also said that the municipality imposed building violation fees on them where the first one was in 2002 for 150 thousand NIS and the other one was in 2012 for 50 thousand NIS and they were both paid in full. The demolition orders have been postponed for years since the family was trying to obtain a building permit since their land is classified by the municipality as “green land”. Ghazzawi family pointed out that the municipality employees tried to demolish their building back in 2006 but they were able to obtain an order from the court to stop the demolition, and the Israeli forces assaulted Tawfiq and brother Ayed.
