Briton suffers with Arabs under Israeli demolition law

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JERUSALEM, Aug 4 (AFP): Six months pregnant and exhausted, British mother Jessica Barhum is still shocked that Israeli authorities ordered her, her husband and their baby out of bed at daybreak and pulverised their home.
"I can't believe that it's lawful, that this law exists. I'm from England. Do you know what I mean?" said Jessica, 32, who grew up in the southern city of Salisbury but moved to Israel after marrying Musa, her Arab Israeli husband.
"You can't believe a country like this would make a law against its own citizens," she said.
For the last four decades, Israeli legislation has permitted the demolition of homes built without a construction permit, the case for the Barhums' home in the village of Ein Rafa, west of Jerusalem, although a permit was pending.
Critics say the law is disproportionately used against Arab Israelis rather than Jewish Israelis. Permits can take years to acquire, particularly for Palestinians wanting to build in Israeli-occupied and annexed east Jerusalem.
Jessica, a landscape gardener who also holds Swiss nationality, converted to Islam before marrying and moving to her husband's village, giving birth to their daughter Sara and learning to speak nearly fluent Arabic and Hebrew.
Last week she watched in disbelief as two bulldozers with pneumatic drills implemented an 18-month-old demolition order against their home, which Musa spent eight years building on land owned by his family.
Armed Israeli security forces woke them up at 5:00 am. Jessica said she was given five minutes to get out. Her daughter screamed and her husband was arrested as clearers stuffed some of their possessions into plastic bags before the bulldozers pulverised the two-bedroom house and vegetable patch into rubble.
"It did feel like a war zone," she said, pale under her pastel-coloured headscarf. The adjoining apartment where her newly married sister-in-law lived was also smashed.
Her sister-in-law, a hairdresser to the Israeli elite at the luxury King David Hotel in nearby Jerusalem, went into hysterics and then to hospital.
The demolition law has been in force since 1968, allowing "illegal" houses to be razed even if permits are pending in the bureaucratic pipeline.
In 2005, Musa was given legal notice he had 18 months to finalise the permit or have his house bulldozed. When the deadline ran out, the permit was still not ready.
Jessica said a woman at the local council led them to believe everything would be alright. They did not consult a lawyer. They now feel they were naive.
The pile of rubble took two days to clear. The Barhums lost their bed and a handmade cupboard. Sara's cot was broken, her soft toys and little shoes were found littered among the ruins.
Hundreds of Arabs in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories each year face the same trauma of watching bulldozers tearing their homes to dust.