Members of the Zarineh family in Bir Oneh showing the demolition orders that killed their dreams. (WAFA Images / Amhad Mizher)

By Anan Shehadeh

BETHLEHEM, Tuesday, April 09, 2019 (WAFA) – As Israel intensifies its efforts to incorporate into Jerusalem the village of Bir Oneh, which is part of the southern West Bank city of Beit Jala in the Bethlehem district, it is in the process killing dreams of the village’s young Palestinian residents, and the old alike.

One way Israel is doing this is by demolishing homes of Bir Oneh’s Palestinian residents under the pretext of not possessing a building permit to eventually push them to leave their land and move into West Bank territory leaving their land up for grab by Israel.

“I was planning to complete my apartment this year before I get married and raise a family in it,” said Saleh Zarineh, 23, after the Israeli authorities demolished the two-story building he was building with his father and siblings on their legal land in Bir Oneh. “But now the occupation has killed my dream.”

He said, “I left school when I was 16 and joined the workforce to help my father and three brothers build this house. Everything we made we put into this house, which we watched today crumble in front of our eyes and there was nothing we could do about it.”

The Israeli authorities gave the Zarineh family until tomorrow, Wednesday, to demolish its own house or it will be demolished for them and forced to pay over $70,000 in demolition cost.

Not wanting, or even able, to pay this unfairly high cost, the Bir Oneh family tore down today its two-story building with its own hands and with it the dreams of the family have vanished.

The Zarinehs are refugees from 1948 when they left their homes in Malha area in Jerusalem after it was taken over by the Jewish militias and moved to settle in nearby Bir Oneh where over the years they bought the plot of land they live on and where they had wanted to build their dream family home.

They started work on their home in May 2018, but soon after they received an Israeli stop-work order and then a demolition order. They hired lawyers and went to court to cancel the demolition order but lost the case even though they had land ownership deeds from the Ottoman period. They even tried the Israeli High Court, which also rejected their appeal and had to pay all court costs in addition to lawyers’ fees that amounted to over $60,000, until they got the final demolition order three days ago.

“These are premeditated murder commands,” said Ayman Zarineh, the father, showing the demolition orders.

Zarineh was not the only one who lost his home to Israeli orders. He is actually one of dozens of similar cases in Bir Oneh.

Few months ago, his cousin, Walid Zarineh lost his six-story building, and then a three-story building owned by attorney Basima Lahham was also demolished.

Bir Oneh was once part of Beit Jala until Israel decided to sever most of its land to incorporate it into greater Jerusalem in order to build roads through it to serve the illegal settlements built south of the occupied city of Jerusalem. But in order to do this, it had to first empty the land from its Palestinian residents and prevent them from building any more homes on it, which it succeeded in doing with its administrative order the might as an occupying power. So far, eight buildings were demolished and 12 more are awaiting a similar fate.

M.K.