WEST BANK, (PIC)
For Palestinians, the sound of an Israeli bulldozer is no longer just noise preceding the demolition of a wall or a house roof, but has rather become an announcement of the uprooting of an entire life. In just a few minutes, years of hard work turn into rubble, and families find themselves out in the open, not only because they lost a home, but because they lost a part of their memory, stability, and sense of security.
As these scenes are repeated day after day in the West Bank and Jerusalem, Palestinians see that demolition is no longer an administrative procedure as the occupation authorities claim, but rather an integrated policy to empty the land of its owners and redraw the population map by force.
The bulldozers do not leave
During recent days, the scope of demolition expanded to include several governorates in the West Bank and Jerusalem.
In southern al-Khalil, houses and facilities were demolished in al-Dirat, Idhna, and Beit Awwa, while a house was leveled to the ground in Bruqin, west of Salfit, and the bulldozers extended to the town of Sur Baher in Jerusalem, where an entire residential building containing four apartments was removed.
Observers say that this geographical expansion reflects the transition of demolition operations from scattered events into a daily policy targeting various Palestinian areas.
قوات الاحتلال هدمت بالجرافات منزلا مأهولا للمواطن اياد مصلح العمور، يتكون من طابقين مساحته 600 مترا مربعا، يأوي ثلاثة عائلات و15 فردا. pic.twitter.com/VxtpjV4XDE
— Wafa News Agency (@WAFA_PS) July 9, 2026
Numbers reveal the scale of targeting
Scenes alone do not reflect the scale of the escalation, but numbers confirm it too, as demolition operations during the year 2025 caused the displacement of more than 1,700 Palestinians, while the occupation authorities carried out 341 demolition operations during the first half of the current year, destroying 740 Palestinian facilities, along with hundreds of new demolition notices.
As for Jerusalem, the number of demolition operations since the beginning of 2026 has crossed the 200 figure barrier, in an indicator that reflects an unprecedented escalation in targeting Palestinian homes and facilities.
Licensing, a pretext and nothing more
The occupation authorities hold on to the pretext of building without a license to justify demolition operations, yet Palestinian and international human rights organizations confirm that the problem originally begins from a planning system that restricts Palestinians and makes obtaining building permits almost impossible, especially in areas designated C and East Jerusalem. Thus, the Palestinian finds himself facing two choices: either building to secure a shelter for his family with the risk of demolition, or refraining from building and facing a permanent housing crisis.
Masafer Yatta: A model for the policy of uprooting
Masafer Yatta, south of al-Khalil, is considered one of the areas most exposed to this policy, where the demolition of homes, agricultural facilities, barns, and notices to stop construction are repeated. The demolition does not target buildings only, but also affects sources of livelihood and basic infrastructure, in an attempt to weaken the ability of the residents to remain on their lands, in a way that serves settlement expansion in areas designated C.
متابعة الوطن | في سياسة يومية لتهجير المواطنين، جرافات الاحتلال تنفذ عملية هدم لمنزل في بلدة صور باهر، جنوب القدس المحتلة. #القدس #صور_باهر #القدس_المحتلة #فلسطين #هدم_المنازل #الاحتلال #عاجل pic.twitter.com/4twoXXvyCJ
— قناة الوطن Alwtan TV (@AlwtanTv) July 8, 2026
Jerusalem: A battle over the identity of the city
In Jerusalem, the demolition policy goes beyond the architectural dimension to an attempt to reshape the demographic situation of the city. In Silwan, especially in al-Bustan and Batn al-Hawa, hundreds of families face the risk of eviction and demolition, while human rights reports warn that thousands of Palestinians are threatened with losing their homes to make way for settlement projects that seek to replace the indigenous population with settlers.
Homes demolished and existence erased
The head of the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission, Moayyad Shaaban, believes that the occupation no longer targets individual buildings, but has rather begun targeting the elements of Palestinian existence, through combining demolition, land confiscation, expanding settlements, constructing bypass roads, and settler attacks, which constitutes a single system whose goal is to push Palestinians to gradual departure.
The director of the Wadi Hilweh Information Center, Jawad Siyam, points out that many Jerusalemite families are forced to demolish their homes with their own hands to avoid exorbitant fines, in one of the cruelest forms of pressure, where the owner of the house turns into an executor of the decision to demolish his home.
More than rubble
According to human rights organizations and Palestinian officials, the demolition policy is no longer just the removal of walls and roofs, but has rather become a means to reshape geography and demography in the occupied Palestinian territories. Every house demolished does not mean the loss of a stone only, but opens a new door for displacement, narrows the space of Palestinian existence, and gives the settlement project an additional opportunity to expand, in a battle where the bulldozer has become one of the occupation’s most present and influential tools.