JERUSALEM, November 15, 2017 (WAFA) – Israeli municipality of Jerusalem demolished on Wednesday morning a two-storey building under construction in the neighborhood of al-Issawiya, in occupied East Jerusalem, according to local sources.

Locals told WAFA that staff from the Israeli municipality of Jerusalem accompanied by an Israeli police escort raided the neighborhood and demolished the building, under the pretext of lacking an Israeli permit of construction.

Mohammad Abu Rayala, a local rights activist, said the owners of the building had earlier received a notification to stop the construction of the building. He said though the owners stopped the construction upon notification and started the process of obtaining a construction permit, they were astonished that the building was demolished without a warning.

Israel rarely grants Palestinians permits to build in East Jerusalem, though the Jerusalem municipality has claimed that compared to the Jewish population, they receive a disproportionately low number of permit applications from Palestinian communities.

For Israeli settlers living in occupied Jerusalem, the planning, marketing, development, and infrastructure are funded and executed by the Israeli government. On the other side, in Palestinian neighborhoods, all the burden falls on individual families to grapple with a lengthy permit application that can last for several years and cost tens of thousands of dollars.

M.N/M.H