« People died while waiting for a new home »

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Since the beginning of the Second Intifida, in September 2000, the Israeli occupation forces demolished 12,000 Palestinian houses, partially or completely, across the Gaza Strip, displacing approximately 124,000 people, including 60,000 children.

Ahmad Abdallah Youssef al Afifi (32) lost his Rafah home, in the southern Gaza Strip, in a demolition in 2003. The place where his house once stood is close to the Israeli and Egyptian border with Gaza, an area rendered inaccessible to Palestinians following Israel’s unilaterally imposing a so called ‘buffer zone’, which is implemented through the use of live fire.

“I had been living in the house, together with my mother and brother, for four months we had to flee from the area. It was too dangerous to stay there due to the shootings that were taking place,” recalls Ahmad.

“Once, our house was shelled by the Israelis around 3 o’clock in the morning. I was at home but luckily no one was injured. We managed to escape. UNRWA reconstructed the damage but the problem was that the Israelis attacked the house again after that. There was a lot of shooting which often forced us to sleep at my sister’s house. We suffered a lot during those months. The windows were broken, the water tanks were attacked. The roof, which was made of asbestos, was destroyed.

After four months in that situation I was injured. The Israeli army had moved into our neighbourhood and I took my mother to a neighbour’s house for safety. When I left their house I encountered a tank on my way. In response, I jumped over the wall of a nearby school. Then the tank drove into the wall, making the wall collapse on top of me, injuring my back. I was unable to walk for three months after that and had to stay at my brother’s house. After that incident we decided we had to leave.

For two years we rented an apartment nearby and intended to move back into our home. During those years I got married and me and my wife had our first daughter, Halaa.

One day neighbours called me and told me that our house had been demolished, as well as a house belonging to the Abu Shamallah family. Israeli forces had moved into the area and while it withdrew they blew up our house with an explosive.”

Because he is a refugee registered with UNRWA, the agency came to the family following the demolition. “UNRWA made an assessment of our situation. Since then they have been giving us $100 per month for rent but that is not enough for us to pay for an apartment. We are supposed to move to a new house in the Saoudi project in Tel al Sultan area.”

Ahmad, his wife and four children now live in a refugee camp in Rafah and are still waiting to move into a new house which they can call their own. Ahmad says that he and his family “had been promised the new house in the year after the demolition. We have been waiting for the past 8 years. They started the project last year. It wasn’t possible before that because of the closure. In December this year will should move there. The new house is far away from here so the children will have to go to a new school there, located inside the project.”

Despite the anticipation of moving to the new house, but the family expects to face problems when moving into their new home. “Of course we are very happy that we will be moving to our own place ; we have been waiting for such a long time. But there is a problem. When UNRWA visited us for the assessment it was just me, my wife, and our daughter. Now we have three more children so the apartment will be too small. There are only two rooms ; too little space and no privacy.

Also, my brother was absent during the assessment and when UNRWA made its assessment so they didn’t count him in. He is married now. I filed an official complaint with UNRWA because we cannot all live in the same house. We have not received a response until now.

For nearly a decade we stayed in rental apartments, waiting for a new home. We moved to three different places since the demolition, depending on the rent and availability of the apartment we were staying in. The waiting has been very difficult. There are people who died while waiting for a new home. My mother died before she got to see the new house, which she was hoping for.

The Saoudi housing project finally started moving, following years of lacking construction materials caused by the closure imposed on the Gaza Strip. This should have happened many years ago when Saoudi Arabia promised to pay for the project.”

Ahmad does not hold hopes for justice within the Israeli legal system ; “I did not undertake legal action against the occupation’s demolition because the Israelis destroyed many houses in the border area, without legal consequences. I think it requires a larger collective effort to take action against this. Even if I filed a claim I know I wouldn’t get compensated or get my rights back. I hope that somebody is able to file a complaint against Israel for all houses that it demolished, and to raise the issue on an international level.”

Ahmad makes clear that living through a home demolition also has irreversible consequences that cannot be fixed by a new home or compensation. “Some people were given new houses, but no one can give us back the memories we lived in our old houses. I hope this will never happen to anyone again.”

The mass home demolitions across the Gaza Strip, carried out as a collective punitive measure as well as the unilateral imposition of a so called ‘buffer zone’, are a violation of international humanitarian law, which prohibits the forcible transfer of civilians and the unwarranted destruction of private civilian property by the Occupying Power, codified in Article 49 and 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The Israeli home demolitions constitute a form of collective punishment against the civilian population, which is a violation of Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Furthermore, Article 11 (1) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) recognizes everyone’s right to an adequate standard of living, which includes adequate housing. As the Occupying Power and signatory to the Covenant, Israel is obliged to “take appropriate steps to ensure the realization of this right.” Furthermore, under Article 27 (3) of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) Israel has the duty to provide material assistance and support programmes to parents in providing housing for their children.

Finally, the illegal home demolitions interfere unlawfully with the people’s privacy and their family life, in violation of Article 17 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and Article 16 (1) of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).

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