Standing outside of his falafel restaurant in the Ras al-Amud neighborhood of East Jerusalem, Eid Shawar gestures to the level above his shop that he’s hoping to renovate into a temporary home. Inside, parts of a toilet sit in front of the cash register and there are gaps in the roof. Seating isn’t available in his takeout establishment, let alone room for Shawar’s family of seven, but he’s desperate.

“We’re looking for a place to live, but rent is very expensive [in Jerusalem],” Shawar said.1

On December 22, 2025, the apartment that was his family’s home for 11 years was turned to rubble when the Jerusalem Municipality sent its bulldozers to demolish the 100-resident building in the Wadi Qaddum section of East Jerusalem’s Silwan neighborhood. It was the largest demolition carried out in East Jerusalem in over a decade.2

Shawar recalled how police and municipality workers stormed into the building at 3:30 a.m. and gave everyone seven minutes to evacuate.

“It happened very quickly,” Shawar said. “We didn’t have time to take anything with us.”

Footage of the forced expulsion shows crowds of Israelis in yellow vests provoking and even beating residents as they leave.3 According to building residents, these were individuals hired by the municipality to help expel them.

“They came in groups . . . in an aggressive way, where they started entering the building and emptying the belongings and people’s furniture from the houses,” Adly Al-Reshaq, a building resident, told Jerusalem Story.4

Nearly a month later, Shawar and Al-Reshaq haven’t found another place to live. Al-Reshaq and his family are staying with his father, while Shawar’s family is scattered around the city. His children are staying at his mother’s home in Ras al-Amud while he sleeps in his shop, and his wife moves between the two.

Al-Reshaq said that after the last rejection of their proposed plan, the municipality then demanded a land deed from the residents, an arduous and time-consuming process (see Planning Expert Explains New Protocol Stopping Palestinian Residential Development in East Jerusalem).

After years of Israeli threats to demolish the Wadi Qaddum building, the fact that it was destroyed now is notable.

“It is not like the municipality has any plans for this area [unlike other areas where Israeli settlements are planned]. It will probably be a pile of rubble there for the coming years,” Kronish told Jerusalem Story. “It’s real tragedy—and with such violence too.”

Experts say that Palestinian displacement has been increasing for years, first in 2017 when Israeli officials altered planning processes through the Kaminitz Law to allow more demolitions of unpermitted homes, and then again in 2022, when the Israeli government became more right wing.

On October 7, 2023, Israel launched a genocidal war against the Gaza Strip in the wake of attacks by Gaza-based Hamas. The other territory occupied by Israel in 1967, the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), has also been targeted for intensified measures resulting in ethnic cleansing, such as violent pogroms and arson attacks. In fact, on January 21, 2025, two days after the ceasefire was declared in Gaza, Israel launched “Operation Iron Wall,” a large-scale military operation. According to Human Rights Watch, “The operation emptied the camps in [the northern cities of] Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nur Shams of virtually all its [sic] residents, making it the largest displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank in one operation since the 1967 war. Ten months later, the camps remain empty with approximately 32,000 residents displaced. Since then, the Israeli military has demolished 850 homes and other buildings across all three camps.”8 At the date of this writing, residents have not been allowed to return.

At the same time, Palestinians across the rest of the West Bank, especially in Area C, were subjected to a variety of bureaucratic and violent measures including military orders, settler attacks, pogroms, home demolitions, and denial of access to land and water that forced them to flee their homes and localities.9

In Jerusalem, efforts to de-Palestinize the city have also intensified sharply, albeit taking somewhat different forms. In 2024 and 2025, for example, East Jerusalem experienced the highest number of demolitions on record—255 and 257, respectively10 (see Palestinians in East Jerusalem Facing Record Levels of Displacement, Study Reveals).

“The worst deterioration [in planning and building] is following October 7, 2023, which created an atmosphere where almost all brakes are off and Israel can do practically whatever it wants,” Aviv Tatarsky, a researcher at Ir Amim, an Israeli rights organization tracking Jerusalem political developments, told Jerusalem Story.11

Tatarsky says that the lack of official planning for Palestinians is the root cause; were planning to incorporate Palestinian growth, then homes could be permitted and legalized. Prior to October 7, Palestinians might have been able to extend the time before a property was demolished through negotiations and legal maneuvers. Today, however, inflicting cruelty and collective punishment is the point, he explains.

As the number of buildings razed in East Jerusalem increases, Israeli settlement expansion in the area is also intensifying. According to unpublished data compiled by the Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center (JLAC), the Jerusalem Municipality approved 19,700 settler housing units in 2024 and 22,000 settler homes in 2025.12

“It is important to connect the settlement expansion and the promotion of settlements in East Jerusalem to the demolition,” Rami Saleh, JLAC’s Jerusalem branch director, told Jerusalem Story.

“Twelve apartments demolished in Wadi Qaddum will be replaced with another outpost or a new settlement project,” Saleh said.

Wadi Qaddum, which is located in Silwan, is already surrounded by settlement endeavors like Israeli settler group Ateret Cohanim’s plans to take over Batn al-Hawa’s homes and the Jerusalem Municipality’s efforts to demolish al-Bustan homes to build a tourist park that manufactures a Jewish archaeological connection. Silwan is of strategic importance to Israel, given its close proximity to the Old City and al-Haram al-Sharif, where the Western Wall, Judaism’s most sacred site, is located.

For Al-Reshaq, what he and his fellow neighbors experienced is all part of the Israeli state’s agenda.

“These policies are [meant] to displace Palestinians in East Jerusalem,” Al-Reshaq said. “This is the main reason for the demolition of the building.”

Not only had the families bought these apartments, but some had renovated their units. The demolition occurred so quickly that many residents didn’t have time to collect their cash, jewelry, and other assets.

“During these evacuations or demolitions, people lose their private belongings and funds,” Shawar said, who estimates he lost NIS 1million ($320,000) in home renovations and assets because of the demolition.

“It’s very common that everything is stolen or taken away,” he said. When Shawar returned to the site of his home after the demolition, he said he couldn’t find his belongings among the rubble.

“We are bleeding from the building, and the building has drained all of our blood, our investments, that we put into it,” Al-Reshaq said. “And now we are displaced and don’t know where to go.”