Israel Increasing Efforts to Expel Jerusalem’s Palestinian Villages

Israeli demolitions of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem hit a new record in 2024, with 255 buildings razed that year.1 This year is already on track to surpass that figure as more structures have been demolished thus far in 2025 than during the same period last year.2 It’s not just the spate of demolitions that’s increased, however; entire communities are now threatened with displacement as Israel ramps up its demolition streak across East Jerusalem.

On January 13, 2025, the Jerusalem Municipality issued stop-work orders for all construction, a preliminary step before issuing demolition orders, for the Sourkhi area that is home to 200 residents in the Palestinian village of al-Sawahira. The area is located on the northern tip of East Jerusalem abutting the Separation Wall. On January 26, the municipality also delivered stop-work orders to the village of Khallet al-Nu‘man on the southern end of East Jerusalem, home to 150 Palestinians,3 and on May 8, the municipality issued a final demolition order to be carried out in two weeks’ time for a residential building in the Wadi Qaddum neighborhood of Silwan, which is home to 85 Palestinians.4

“By the time that [Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir] became a member of this government, the situation in Jerusalem related to building became very bad,” Inad Sourkhi, a resident of al-Sawahira’s Sourkhi compound, told Jerusalem Story.5

The minister has made no secret of his goal to demolish Palestinian structures built without the required permits, most recently instructing police to prioritize demolitions of buildings where Palestinian families reside.6

“It’s the policy of Ben-Gvir,” Sourkhi said.

Israel has been slow to draw up and even approve zoning plans for East Jerusalem ever since it illegally occupied the area in 1967 and annexed it in 1980. Without a zoning plan, East Jerusalem residents can’t obtain the proper building permits to expand their homes, thus making any construction illegal.

To save their homes from demolition, Sourkhi residents must submit a zoning plan for their neighborhood to the Jerusalem Municipality by October 7, 2025. Yet, the municipality has repeatedly rejected the community’s past zoning plans, claiming that the street leading to their homes isn’t under the municipality’s jurisdiction and is considered a security road maintained by Israel’s army, since the road ends with a military checkpoint.

“Now they’re in one of these loops where the courts and the legal advisors tell them, ‘If you don’t want demolition to happen, you have to have a plan.’ So, they start a plan again, but then planning policy tells them, ‘You can’t have a plan here,’” Sari Kronish, an architect at an Israeli planning rights organization, Bimkom, told Jerusalem Story.7

This contradictory planning conundrum is near ubiquitous across East Jerusalem, as other neighborhoods also find themselves in a Groundhog Day scenario.

“Wadi Qaddum was slated for demolition [before October 7, 2023] and they protested, and it was the same exact loop,” Kronish said. “And they went back to the planning authorities and tried to promote a plan again. And now they’re again facing demolition.”

The Jerusalem Municipality did not respond to Jerusalem Story’s inquiries on why the city is requesting a zoning plan if it has rejected past applications given the security road.

Most al-Sawahira residents built their homes in the 1980s on property they bought in the 1950s under Jordanian occupation. When they were building, the residents were informed by the Israeli military authorities that they need to obtain permission from the municipality. For 40 years, they’ve tried obtaining permits without success.

While the threat of demolition has loomed in the past, it never materialized. Sourkhi feels that in this current political climate, that threat is certain.

“In the 1980s, we went to the Jerusalem Municipality, and it was easy to meet the mayor, or his deputy. It was easy to speak with them. Now you can’t see anyone,” Sourkhi said, attributing this radio silence to Israel’s most right-wing government in its history, which was elected in 2022.

While Palestinian areas face a continuous cycle of demolition, nearby Israeli settlements are not subject to the same obstacles. Adjacent to al-Sawahira is the Israeli settlement of Kidmat Tzion, whose planned expansion by 384 housing units is already in the works.

“The reason Kidmat Tzion is where it is, is because [settlers are] arguing Jewish ownership from before 1948 on those exact parcels of land,” Kronish said. “That’s what gets prioritized versus what already exists.”

Ultimately, when it comes to planning in Israel, Kronish explained, the goal is to increase the Jewish presence while displacing the Palestinian population.

“Demographic policy is always the driving force,” Kronish said.

The completion of the Separation Wall in 2003 changed the layout of both Khallet al-Nu‘man and al-Sawahira. The wall split al-Sawahira and separated the Sourkhi family, with two-thirds of the village left beyond the wall. Despite paying property tax to the Jerusalem Municipality, residents are not afforded all the city’s services. Residents located on the Jerusalem side of the wall (“inside”) are provided with water and garbage collection, while residents living beyond the wall (“outside”) are not provided with any municipal services. Instead, they rely on receiving services from the neighboring Palestinian town of Abu Dis, on the outside of the wall in Area B of the occupied West Bank, which gets its services from the Palestinian Authority.

The same exists for Khallet al-Nu‘man, a village located within the city limits of Jerusalem at its southeastern edge that dates from the 1930s and has 150 residents, 40 of whom are minors.[1] While residents pay NIS 5,000 (about $1,413) in annual property tax, they do not receive any municipal services. Instead, they receive utilities like water from the Palestinian city of Bethlehem in the West Bank, while having to dispose of their garbage themselves.

Unlike al-Sawahira, Khallet al-Nu‘man residents were not granted Israeli permanent-resident IDs when Israel occupied the town in 1967, although they were entitled to them. The construction of the Separation Wall in 2003 followed by a military checkpoint in 2006 isolated the village from Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank. Today, residents and visitors can only enter or exit through a single military checkpoint, the Mazmuriyya checkpoint, and receive the army’s permission to enter their own village, which is closed off by a military gate. The guards staffing the checkpoint to the village have a list of its 150 residents, and they alone are allowed in.8

The army’s eyes are constantly on the village with surveillance cameras installed across Khallet al-Nu‘man. Olive groves line the hills of the pastoral village but cultivating them is forbidden, residents say. If work is done in their fields, the army arrives and declares the area a closed military zone and may issue fines or even detain residents.

There are no schools or medical facilities in the village, so residents must travel to Bethlehem for these services as well. Paying property tax and even dealing with the demolition orders they have received means going to municipal offices in Jerusalem, which residents cannot do without an Israeli permanent-resident ID or military permit to enter Israel.

“We’re not allowed to have access to our center of life,” Nidal Dar’awi, Khallet al-Nu‘man resident, told Jerusalem Story.9 “It’s like a prison, it’s totally restricted.”

Over the years, the municipality has refused to draw up a master plan for the village or to allow any construction in it. Building by necessity proceeded without permits. On January 26, 2025, the municipality pasted demolition orders on all homes in the village, even those that were built before Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967. According to Israeli human rights watchdog B’Tselem, Israel intends to demolish the village and expel the residents.10

Despite the difficulties and pending demolitions, residents refuse to leave their homes.

“This is our land, and we don’t want to leave,” Dar’awi said. “This is part of the Israeli policies for [the Palestinian] people; they want them to relocate and live somewhere else.”

As Israel escalates its demolition campaign across East Jerusalem, Kronish explains that areas like Khallet al-Nu‘man and al-Sawahira are the most at risk of expulsion.

“There’s a lot of pressure by the government on the municipality to uphold the governance and punish collectively,” Kronish said. “So, they target places that don’t have any other recourse . . . the most vulnerable and the most unprotected.”

And instead of providing East Jerusalem villages situated along the municipal boundaries their rights in the annexed territory, Kronish noted, Israel is pushing for their displacement.

“The Jerusalem Municipality, rather than now take responsibility for these places after all these years, is systematically working to try to erase them,” Kronish said.