Since October more than 500 homes have been destroyed by tank fire, missiles and army bulldozers. House demolitions represent a cynical use of law and planning for purely political purposes. Immediately after the 1967 war a third of the land in East Jerusalem was expropriated for Jewish building. Thus the 200,000 Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem are squeezed into small enclaves, unable to build modest houses on their own land, while the government builds tens of thousands of housing units for Jews only in the eastern part of the city. And while whole houses are demolished in the Arab sector, this never happens among the Jewish population.
Every person has the basic human right to provide a decent shelter for one's family.
We demand that the Jerusalem Municipality desist from its house demolitions policy. Do not make dozens of Jerusalem residents homeless this week. This is not the way to coexistence and peace, only to greater hatred, conflict and suffering. We all aspire to live together in a shared city in which no group dominates the others.