JERUSALEM: Ratib Matar’s family was growing. They needed more space.
Before his granddaughters, now 4 and 5, were born, he built three apartments on an eastern slope overlooking Jerusalem’s ancient landscape. The 50-year-old construction contractor moved in with his brother, son, divorced daughter and their young kids — 11 people in all, plus a few geese.
But Matar was never at ease. At any moment, the Israeli code-enforcement officers could knock on his door and take everything away.
That moment came on Jan. 29, days after a Palestinian gunman killed seven people in east Jerusalem, the deadliest attack in the contested capital since 2008. Israel’s new far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir called not only for the sealing of the assailant’s family home, but also the immediate demolition of dozens of Palestinian homes built without permits in east Jerusalem, among other punitive steps.
Mere hours after Ben-Gvir’s comments, the first bulldozers rumbled into Matar’s neighborhood of Jabal Mukaber.
For many Palestinians, the gathering pace of home demolitions is part of the new ultranationalist government’s broader battle for control of east Jerusalem, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war and claimed by the Palestinians as the capital of a future independent state.
The battle is waged with building permits and demolition orders — and it is one the Palestinians feel they cannot win. Israel says it is simply enforcing building regulations.
“Our construction is under siege from Israel,” Matar said. His brothers and sons lingered beside the ruins of their home, drinking bitter coffee and receiving visitors as though in mourning. “We try really hard to build, but in vain,” he said.
Last month, Israel demolished 39 Palestinian homes, structures and businesses in east Jerusalem, displacing over 50 people, according to the United Nations. That was more than a quarter of the total number of demolitions in 2022. Ben-Gvir posted a photo on Twitter of the bulldozers clawing at Matar’s home.
“We will fight terrorism with all the means at our disposal,” he wrote, though Matar’s home had nothing to do with the Palestinian shooting attacks.
Most Palestinian apartments in east Jerusalem were built without hard-to-get permits. A 2017 study by the UN described it as “virtually impossible” to secure them.
The Israeli municipality allocates scant land for Palestinian development, the report said, while facilitating the expansion of Israeli settlements. Little Palestinian property was registered before Israel annexed east Jerusalem in 1967, a move not internationally recognized.
Matar said the city rejected his building permit application twice because his area is not zoned for residential development. He’s now trying a third time.
The penalty for unauthorized building is often demolition. If families don’t tear their houses down themselves, the government charges them for the job. Matar is dreading his bill — he knows neighbors who paid over $20,000 to have their houses razed.
Now homeless, Matar and his family are staying with relatives. He vows to build again on land he inherited from his grandparents, though he has no faith in the Israeli legal system.
“They don’t want a single Palestinian in all of Jerusalem,” Matar said. Uphill, in the heart of his neighborhood, Israeli flags fluttered from dozens of apartments recently built for religious Jews.
Since 1967, the government has built 58,000 homes for Israelis in the eastern part of the city, and fewer than 600 for Palestinians, said Daniel Seidemann, an Israeli lawyer specializing in the geopolitics of Jerusalem, citing the government’s statistics bureau and his own analysis. In that time, the city’s Palestinian population has soared by 400 percent.
“The planning regime is dictated by the calculus of national struggle,” Seidemann said.
Israel’s city plans show state parks encircling the Old City, with some 60 percent of Jabal Mukaber zoned as green space, off-limits to Palestinian development. At least 20,000 Palestinian homes in east Jerusalem are now slated for demolition, watchdogs say.
Matar and his neighbors face an agonizing choice: Build illegally and live under constant threat of demolition, or leave their birthplace for the occupied West Bank, sacrificing Jerusalem residency rights that allow them to work and travel relatively freely throughout Israel.
While there are no reliable figures for permit approvals, the Israeli municipality set aside just over 7 percent of its 21,000 housing plans for Palestinian homes in 2019, reported Ir Amim, an anti-settlement advocacy group. Palestinians are nearly 40 percent of the city’s roughly 1 million people.
“This is the purpose of this policy,” said Aviv Tatarsky, a researcher at Ir Amim. “Palestinians are forced to leave Jerusalem.”
Arieh King, a Jerusalem deputy mayor and settler leader, acknowledged that demolitions help Israel entrench control over east Jerusalem, home to the city’s most important religious sites.
“It’s part of enforcing sovereignty,” King said. “I’m happy that at last we have a minister that understands,” he added, referring to Ben-Gvir.
Ben-Gvir is now pushing for the destruction of an apartment tower housing 100 people. Trying to lower tensions, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delayed the eviction that was planned for Tuesday, Israeli media reported.
King contended it was possible for Palestinians to secure permits and accused them of building without authorization to avoid an expensive bureaucracy.
When the Al-Abasi family in east Jerusalem found a demolition order plastered on their new breeze-block home last month, they contemplated their options. The government had knocked down their last apartment, built on the same lot, eight years ago. This time, Jaafar Al-Abasi decided, he would tear it down himself.
Al-Abasi hired a tractor and invited his relatives and neighbors to join. The destruction took three days, with breaks for hummus and soda. His three sons borrowed pickaxes and jackhammers, angrily hacking away at the walls they had decorated with colored plates just last month.
“This place is like a ticking time bomb,” said his brother in law, 48-year-old Mustafa Samhouri, who helped them out.
Protests over the demolitions have roiled east Jerusalem in recent days. Two weekends ago, Samhouri said, the family’s 13-year-old cousin opened fire at Jewish settlers in the neighborhood of Silwan just across the valley, wounding two people before being shot and arrested.
“The pressure just grows more and more,” Samhouri said. “And at last, boom.”
Israel steps up Jerusalem home demolitions as violence rises
https://arab.news/yum9f
Israel steps up Jerusalem home demolitions as violence rises
- National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir called for the immediate demolition of dozens of Palestinian homes built without permits in east Jerusalem
- For many Palestinians the pace of home demolitions is part of the new ultranationalist government’s broader battle for control of east Jerusalem
How Syria’s government responded to February’s floods
- Floodwaters battered fragile camps and infrastructure, exposing the vulnerability of millions still displaced by years of war
- Interim authorities mobilized emergency efforts in Idlib and Latakia, evacuating communities and restoring key roads and bridges
LONDON: All Nour owned was washed away in a single stormy night at the Karamah displacement camp in northwest Syria’s Idlib province — a tent, a few pieces of furniture and some clothing.
She had already lost everything once before. Years earlier, fighting forced her family to flee their home in the countryside of Aleppo.
“When we fled our home in Aleppo back in 2014, I was only 13 and couldn’t even save a single doll,” said Nour, whose name has been changed at her request.
“Just as I couldn’t carry anything back then, I couldn’t carry anything when my home got flooded two weeks ago,” she said. “The neighbors told me to run quickly, and I had to save myself and my child.”
In early February, torrential rains swept through Idlib, Latakia and Hama, inundating camps, homes and farmland. Tents collapsed, crops were destroyed and lives were lost as thousands of already vulnerable families struggled through harsh winter conditions.
The flooding has become an early test of the interim government’s ability to respond to disasters, having come to power just over a year ago following more than a decade of civil war.
Flash flooding triggered by heavy rain on Feb. 7 hit Idlib province and northern Latakia, damaging at least 1,850 tents and destroying 149 within two days, according to the UN humanitarian office, OCHA.
Floodwaters reached at least 21 displacement sites, affecting about 5,300 people and submerging entire shelters.
The impact extended beyond camps. In Latakia’s Qastal Maaf district, at least 30 homes were damaged, while 47 houses were affected in the northwestern Idlib province.
The floods also claimed lives. In northern Latakia, two children were reportedly killed on Feb. 8 after being swept away by floodwaters in a rugged valley in the Jabal Al-Turkman area.
Syrian Arab Red Crescent volunteer Samiha Rakhamiya died while attempting to rescue stranded residents, while six other staff were injured when their vehicle slid into a valley en route to assist affected communities.
Infrastructure damage deepened the disruption. Two bridges linking about 15 villages in Jabal Al-Turkman collapsed, severing access between communities, state media reported.
One bridge over the Northern Great River connected the villages of Al-Sultran and Al-Sarraf. Residents now face journeys of more than two hours instead of minutes.
Officials said surging water levels, exceeding 450 cubic meters per second on Feb. 8, carried debris that clogged a dam and forced water to spill over, eroding surrounding land and blocking roads.
Mustafa Joulha, director of the northern district in Latakia, told state agency SANA that drainage systems were also overwhelmed, worsening flooding in nearby areas.
Authorities deployed emergency teams to clear debris, reopen roads and assess damage.
The floods also strained essential services in Idlib. Ain Al-Bayda hospital was forced out of service, with patients transferred to facilities in Jisr Al-Shughour and Idlib City.
In response, Syrian authorities and humanitarian organizations launched coordinated relief efforts.
An emergency committee was formed, and joint assessment missions surveyed affected camps on Feb. 8.
By Feb. 9, the Ministry of Emergency and Disaster Management said civil defense teams carried out search and rescue operations, evacuated residents from high-risk areas, and also prioritized drainage work and road rehabilitation to restore access.
Displacement shelters were opened near Kherbet Al-Jouz and in northern Latakia. Authorities also reported the availability of 1,500 housing units in Afrin and 100 in Latakia, while dozens of families were evacuated by Feb. 12 from six displacement camps in western Idlib.
Syria’s minister of emergency and disaster, Raed Al-Saleh, told SANA that 173 families were evacuated from camps in Idlib’s Badama and Khirbet Al-Jouz to temporary shelter centers.
In addition, emergency teams have conducted drainage operations, cleared culverts within the camps, reopened more than 25 roads and 30 water channels, and removed five earthen berms as part of preparations for further weather systems.
Aid agencies simultaneously coordinated with local authorities to deliver multi-sector assistance. Camp coordination, health, and shelter teams have been relocating the most affected households, repairing and replacing tents, and distributing essential supplies.
Despite the authorities’ rapid response, the scale of need remains immense as the nation has yet to recover from the devastation left by the civil war which erupted in 2011.
The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, estimates that 7.4 million people remain internally displaced in Syria, with the majority concentrated in the northwest. Camps are clustered along the Syria-Turkiye border, particularly in the Harim area and the Atma-Qah-Sarmada-Al-Dana belt.
Of the total internally displaced population, 5.2 million are estimated to be living outside formal displacement sites, according to the UNHCR.
Although more than 1 million people have returned to their hometowns since the fall of Bashar Assad’s regime on Dec. 8, 2024, many are still struggling to rebuild their lives.
Conditions in displacement camps are especially precarious. During aid distributions in Idlib, Medecins Sans Frontieres described shelters as “extremely fragile.” The organization’s logistics manager, Osama Joukhadar, said displaced people “are exposed to the cold, wind, and snow.”
“Every winter, families struggle just to survive,” he added in a Feb. 18 statement. “We are trying to provide basic support, small but essential help to assist families get through the cold months.”
For many, what began as temporary refuge in those camps has hardened into long-term uncertainty.
About 88 percent of shelter sites in Idlib are informal, self-settled camps, often built on private or agricultural land, according to the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre.
Residents say returning home is often impossible.
“All the camps around us are in very bad condition, but they do not have the ability to return to their hometowns,” said Hajem Al-Asaad, a displaced resident in the Harim Mountains.
“Even if you own land, you cannot live on barren land — you need a home,” he told MSF. “Our homes are destroyed. I need at least $500 to $1,000 just to make basic repairs.”
Humanitarian support has expanded alongside emergency response efforts. The Syrian government deployed mobile medical teams and ambulances across Idlib, and more than two tonnes of medicines and emergency supplies were delivered to local health authorities.
In Latakia, damaged infrastructure is gradually being restored. A key bridge connecting Atira and Kalaz in the province’s countryside has been rehabilitated, and road clearance projects are underway to help residents return, Syria’s Al-Ekhbariah TV reported on Feb. 19.
Yet even as aid reaches affected areas, the floods underscore a deeper vulnerability.
About 90 percent of Syrians live below the poverty line, according to UN estimates, and the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative Index ranks Syria among the world’s most climate-vulnerable, with limited capacity to respond to environmental shocks.
In the first two months of 2026 alone, Syria experienced both severe snowstorms and widespread flooding.
These crises are layered on the legacy of 14 years of conflict, which devastated homes, infrastructure and essential services across the country.
In Daraa province alone, more than 95,000 homes were damaged during the war, including 33,400 that were completely destroyed, the interim government said on Feb. 25.
Nationwide, electricity generation has fallen sharply, leaving most areas with only a few hours of state power each day.
Years of conflict destroyed power plants, transmission lines and substations, reducing effective generation from about 9.5 gigawatts before the war to around 1.5 to 3 gigawatts in recent years, against demand of roughly 6.5 gigawatts or more.
Against this backdrop, disasters like February’s floods do not just disrupt lives — they compound years of loss.
For Nour and millions like her, the war may no longer dominate headlines, but its consequences remain immediate. And when the floodwaters rise, there is often little left to save.
