Westbank: The Society of St. Yves defends a village in the Hebron area, which received stop work orders for their electricity grid.The grid was erected without building permit, as the village was in the year 2009 still not connected to electricity.

Housing and furthermore adequate housing is fundamental to human dignity and – and thus is recognized in UN and international human rights law and charters a basic human right. Yet in East Jerusalem alone around 60,000 Palestinians live under the threat of home demolition by the Israeli authority, with 1,600 demolition orders pending. It is almost impossible under the current legal situation to obtain a building permit in East Jerusalem.

Under the Fourth Geneva Convention occupying powers are prohibited from destroying property or employing collective punishment. Article 53 reads: “Any destruction by the Occupying Power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons […] is prohibited." Furthermore, planning and building is a purely civilian matter. Military authorities have the right to intervene in planning and building only where military matters are involved.

Since its illegal occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967, Israel used the planning laws as one of the means of limiting the number of Palestinians in Jerusalem. After the six days war, the Jordanian planning law of 1966 was annulled which left a legal vacuum in East Jerusalem. Eventually, the Israeli planning laws were implemented in East Jerusalem and they are used until this present day.

In the 1980s, the Jerusalem municipality designated vast areas of land in the Palestinian neighborhoods as "green land" - otherwise known as “open space land” where building is prohibited. And there is almost no chance to change the destination of a parcel of land from non-residential to residential. To reach a decision like this, the parcel must at first cover a minimum area of 10 dunams (10.000sqm). This means that land owners whose plots are less than 10 dunams in size - and this applies to nearly everyone - are unable to advance specific plans that would allow them to build on their land.

The issue of West bank House demolition in area C of the West bank falls under the Jurisdiction of the Secondary planning committee which forms part of the Israeli civil administration which has the body running the affairs of area C.  In considering applications for building permits, the committee uses the antiquated RJ/5 and S/15 Mandatory plans which were adopted in the early 1940’s of the twentieth century as the basis for most of the decisions they make when considering building permit applications made to it.  These plans are in essense agricultural plans which provide for one agricultural building on a plot of land.  In implimenting its decisions, the committee uses the Jordainan planning law No. 79 of the year 1966, as well as a number of Israeli Military orders which came into force throughout the years amending the Jordanian law.