JERUSALEM, Wednesday, November 21, 2018 (WAFA) – In the largest single demolition in Jerusalem in recent years, the Israeli municipality of West Jerusalem demolished on Wednesday 20 shops in Shufat refugee camp in occupied East Jerusalem under the pretext they were built without a permit.

The refugee department in the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) condemned the demolitions and accused the Israeli municipality of waging a war on the camp in an effort to end its status as a refugee camp.

The shops owners were informed on Tuesday of the municipality’s intention to demolish the buildings located on the main road in the camp near its main entrance, which is controlled by Israeli forces.

Witnesses said the Israeli forces blocked all access to the area while the bulldozers were proceeding with the demolition as other shops owners nearby have expressed fear it could lead to the demolition of all shops in the area to remove them from the entrance of the crowded camp.

Israel had surrounded the camp with an 8-meter high concrete wall, totally cutting it off from the rest of the city. Access from the camp to Jerusalem is done through a police-controlled checkpoint.

A statement by the head of the PLO’s refugee department, Ahmad Abu Holy, accused the Israeli municipality of West Jerusalem of waging a war on the camp with the demolition of the 20 shops “under the illegal pretext of building without a permit, but intended to change the character of the camp as part of former West Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat’s plan to end the status of the camp as a refugee camp as part of a bigger plan to end the presence of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in the city and to shut down all its services.”

He said that the municipality has cancelled the name of the camp as Shufat refugee camp, which has a population of 21,000 residents who carry the Jerusalem Israeli identity card, and named it the town of Shufat, which means it will be supervised by the city and will fall under its laws and regulations rather than under UNRWA supervision as the case with all Palestinian refugee camps in the occupied territories and outside them.

Abu Holy said this would mean changing the status of the camp’s refugees from refugees to non-refugees, which means they will be subject to municipality laws and have to pay high taxes on their shops and homes in order to force them to leave it and move into the West Bank as a way to lose their residency in Jerusalem, which he said was part of Israel’s demographic war against the Palestinians intended to reduce their number in Jerusalem while multiplying the number of Jews through the construction of settlements.

M.K.