She has not eaten in two weeks, and barely utters a sound. So she mourns her demolished house, indifferent even to the hugs of her six children who surround her. Not far away sits Rubin Shawiki, a neighbor whose house has also been marked for demolition, and whose nine children are in danger of being thrown out on the street. Only a rose remains Israel is systematically destroying part of Anata, an Arab village situated on the eastern approach to Jerusalem, between the desert and the capital. Six houses have been wrecked over the past few months, together with an assortment of fences and storage rooms deemed illegal by the authorities.
Ruins litter the village.
Additional houses have been slated for demolition, and their inhabitants placed under the constant threat of homelessness. That was the threat facing the Shwamari family over the past two and a half years, causing them to shrink at the sight of each approaching army jeep or at the sound of the telephone ringing - a threat that eventually became reality. No amount of legal or environmental explanations can hide the cruelty and injustice that characterizes the Civil Administration's campaign of destruction. On top of the ridge looms the campus of the Hebrew University, and one cannot help but wonder if its lecturers ever gaze out of the polished windows of the Beit Maiersdorf faculty club at the devastation taking place in the valley below. Salim Shwamari was born 42 years ago in Jerusalem's Old City.