The Israeli bulldozers demolished on Monday a commercial facility in the French Hill area in occupied Jerusalem despite being licensed.
Hesham Harhash one of the owners of Harhash car exhibition that was razed said that a crew from the Israeli municipality accompanied by special military forces and bulldozers stormed into the exhibition owned by his family and destroyed it.
Harhash told the Quds Press news agency that the exhibition’s area is about one dunum adding that it was built in 2006 and the family was able to get a permit in 2008.
The Palestinian lawyer Mohannad Jbara said that the Israeli municipality has been trying since 2012 to seize the land of the exhibition to construct a bus station for the Israeli settlers who come to visit the neighboring “French Hill” park.
Jbara added that the Israeli municipality has lost the case in all courts and when they came today they did not possess a new demolition order but an order issued in 2013 to demolish a part of the exhibition (which was implemented at the time).
Jbara said that Israel follows a new policy which involves implementing the demolition orders in the early morning hours so as to thwart any attempt to stop the demolition.
Since the beginning of this year the Israeli occupation authorities demolished more than 866 residential and commercial buildings in Jerusalem and the West Bank under the pretext of building without a permit. The demolition operations left 1221 Palestinians homeless half of whom are children.
The demolition operations have massively increased in Jerusalem and its environs this year reaching more than 230 demolition operations.
