They and their 10 children, ranging in age from 19 to 2, are currently living in a tent furnished by the Red Cross. Yussef and his eldest son, Hussam, are employed at a shoe factory in the city of Hebron. The family lives on 6.5 acres of land about 273 yards away from a bypass road and about a mile away from the Jewish settlement of Beit Haggai. Between 1988 and 1998, the family has had three houses destroyed because they were built without a permit something that has been almost impossible for Palestinians to obtain from the Israeli government. The Israeli military billed the family for the cost of demolishing the first house, and the family refused to pay the bill.
Family members have ownership documents dating back to the Ottoman Empire.
Yussuf Attrash has twice made an 8-hour round trip to the Israeli Military Civil Administration to appeal the denial of the permit. In each case, he was given a one-minute audience with an Israeli military officer and peremptorily dismissed. There has been an alarming escalation in the number of Palestinian residents of Jerusalem who have had their identity cards confiscated and their rights of residency revoked. In 1967, Israel occupied and then annexed East Jerusalem and 16,000 acres in its environs. Then, in 1994, the Israeli Ministry of Interior changed the law.