In 2024, Hassan Abu Tin received a demolition order from the Israeli military after overlaying his home’s cinder blocks with stone in the Palestinian village of al-Walaja.

Rather than have the army come and ruin their renovations, Abu Tin and his son worked together to destroy the level of the home threatened with demolition.

“One of the worst feelings a human being can have is to destroy something that they built themselves,” Abu Tin told Jerusalem Story.1 “Things that I built and put up and I’m proud of, and then I have to demolish them.”

Today, with nearly 80 new demolition notices issued in the village, the possibility of even more self-imposed home demolitions is escalating.

“It’s a common thing that’s happening,” Abu Tin said. “A lot of people [whose land falls] on the Jerusalem side [of the village] do self-demolitions rather than have the authorities come and give them a high bill to do it . . . The fees can be very high if the Jerusalem Municipality comes and demolishes—NIS 30,000–40,000 [$10,000–$14,000].”

In 2026, the Israeli Civil Administration issued 72 demolition orders in al-Walaja.2 Part of the village is located in Area C, which the Oslo Accords designated to be under full Israeli control (see the interactive map in Jerusalem Post-Oslo). In addition, Israel has illegally absorbed the village’s southern side into Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries (see al-Walaja: The Ancient Palestinian Village Ghettoized by Proliferating Settlements and the Separation Wall). In this illegally annexed region, the Jerusalem Municipality issued 5 more demolition notices against homes, in addition to the 72.3

The majority of the demolition orders target residences (56 buildings), while the rest target stores, livestock pens, and the village’s only school for first to ninth grade students.4 The school is operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and while the humanitarian agency is aware of the order, it is awaiting further information and was not available to comment.5 Last May, Israel closed all UNRWA schools in Jerusalem in accordance with a 2024 law banning the international organization from operating within the area that Israel considers itself sovereign over (see Israel Closes All UNRWA Schools in East Jerusalem).

Since 2014, the UN has recorded the demolition of 141 Palestinian structures in the village not having building permits from the Israeli military.6

The demolition orders charge al-Walaja residents with building without a permit, yet Israel has never zoned the village for construction. Without such a plan, landowners cannot obtain the proper permits to build legally. Given Israel’s lack of interest in developing an outline plan for the village, residents have taken it upon themselves to initiate a plan.

In 2021, the Civil Administration’s Supreme Planning Council approved the community’s outline plan for public review but did not formally deposit it. Given that a planning process was in the works for al-Walaja, the Civil Administration paused enacting demolitions against the village.7

That changed in 2024, when the military flattened a home with an existing demolition order. Since then, 10 homes have been demolished in the parts of al-Walaja that fall into Area C.8 Rights groups and village residents attribute this change to a campaign against al-Walaja led by two parties: Regavim, an Israeli settler group cofounded by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich that targets Palestinian building, and the Regional Council of the Gush Etzion settlements.

“For the past two and a half years, the involvement of the Regavim settler movement has placed attention back on al-Walaja, and more notices and demolition orders have been issued to property owners in al-Walaja recently,” Khadar al-Araj, member of al-Walaja Village Council, told Jerusalem Story.9 “The Regavim movement has worked with the Civil Administration and the Israeli parliament in a big campaign—coming in and filming inside al-Walaja and showing all the development that's happening . . . And with that media campaign, they put pressure on the Civil Administration to come in and start giving notices to many buildings to be demolished.”

Israeli authorities have also pressed pause on outline plans for the Jerusalem section of al-Walaja. In July 2026, the Jerusalem District Planning Committee canceled its hearing on the community-initiated plan and informed residents their plan would not be advanced in the coming months.10

“In East Jerusalem, other Palestinian neighborhoods usually do have outline plans. [They are] very inadequate, very unfair, but at least they offer protection for some of the homes. In al-Walaja, in the part that lies within East Jerusalem, Israel never made an outline plan for it, so no one could get a building permit,” Aviv Tatarsky, a researcher at Ir Amim, an Israeli organization monitoring Jerusalem’s geopolitical developments, told Jerusalem Story.11 “In the Israeli annexation scheme, al-Walaja is a small village coming between Jerusalem and the settlements. So they want to get it out of the way . . . Israel would like the map to be continuously Israel.”

Given the municipality’s reluctance to approve a plan for al-Walaja, the residents appealed to Israel’s Supreme Court in 2017, which then imposed a demolition freeze on 38 homes ordered demolished on the Jerusalem side of al-Walaja—protecting them from the threat of demolition while a planning process is in place.12 However, this protection did not extend to homes or building additions constructed after 2016 due to Israel’s Kaminitz Law, a 2017 amendment to Israel’s Building and Planning Law that allows the municipality to issue demolition orders without first making a request in court. Since this amendment’s passage, Israel has demolished 105 buildings in the annexed part of al-Walaja.13 (These preceded the five mentioned above.)

“It’s a very unique case where there are plans on the table for the village that should provide protection and prevent demolitions. And instead, what we’re seeing is the disregard of these planning efforts and an increase in demolition orders,” Sari Kronish, one of the architects involved in al-Walaja’s Jerusalem outline plan, told Jerusalem Story.14 “Demolitions should not take place. Planning should take place. Demolitions just create more animosity, hatred, and leave people homeless. It’s not a solution for anything—all the more so when there are two plans prepared that could prevent the demolitions.”