Israeli bulldozers on Tuesday demolished a five-storey residential building in occupied East Jerusalem which was home to about 70 people, in a move the local Palestinian authority said was aimed at "forcible transfer".
Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who gleefully oversaw the demolition, claimed the building had been constructed without a permit.
“I love hearing this noise,” Ben Gvir said in a video posted on X as he joined the demolition operation from inside one of the bulldozers.
Densely populated occupied East Jerusalem faces a severe housing crisis, with Israeli authorities using the lack of building permits as a pretext for demolitions, while Palestinians say such permits are nearly impossible to obtain.
‘Dangerous escalation’
The Jerusalem Governorate, the Palestinian local authority for the area, condemned Tuesday's demolition, which it said was "a dangerous escalation in the policy of home demolitions and forcible transfer... and the imposition of a new demographic and urban reality".
Hanine Hreibat, a teacher and mother of four who was renting one of the 10 apartments in the building, said a large Israeli police force arrived in the At-Tur neighbourhood in the early hours of the morning, accompanied by three bulldozers.
They stormed the apartments and gave residents 10 minutes to leave, she said.
Hreibat told AFP she had woken up to the sound of her husband shouting at the police, asking them not to enter the bedroom where she was, adding she had endured "five minutes of terror, with weapons pointed at our heads".
She said police officers had allowed her to take only medicine, money, her handbag and ID card.
Regular demolitions
Among the rubble, residents collected gas cylinders and filled plastic bags with clothes they had managed to pull out from the huge mound of debris.
Hreibat said she had nowhere to go following the demolition.
"We'll look for a second home. Today we're at my in-laws' and tomorrow at my parents'," she said.
Residents confirmed to AFP that they had received a demolition notice on Monday, but did not know when it would be carried out.
Israel regularly carries out demolitions of what it claims are illegal structures built by Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank.
Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967 and later illegally annexed it, a move rejected by the UN and not recognised by the international community.
More than 360,000 Palestinians live in occupied East Jerusalem alongside some 230,000 illegal Israeli settlers. Palestinians see the city as the capital of their future state.
