Home Demolitions

This data set represents incidents of home demolitions and the number of displaced people in East Jerusalem and the West Bank only. It does not include those who have lost their homes in Gaza or the Palestinians living within the territories occupied since 1948.

This is data from last 365 days, not Year-to-Date. The data reflects the reporting as of 09.13.2024. The 5-day average and 30-day average provide insights into the trends over recent days. The Trend represents the trajectory from 09.23.2023 to 09.13.2024 - the last 365 days.

This data only represents information from UN OCHA, which focuses on the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Despite attempts by the US and Israel to delegitimize UN OCHA, the organization's data remains trustworthy due to its rigorous verification processes. UN OCHA relies on personnel with local experience to confirm incidents, ensuring high accuracy and reliability. Their longstanding presence and consistent methodology in conflict zones worldwide bolster the credibility of their data, particularly in Palestine. This data set provides a crucial understanding of not only the humanitarian situation and impacts of home demolitions, but also the ongoing process of ethnic cleansing and land theft in these geographies.

It is important to note that while this data set focuses on the West Bank and East Jerusalem, there are many years in which the number of demolitions and evictions of Palestinians residing in the territories occupied since 1948, such as those residing in the Naqab (Negev), surpass those in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Despite this limited scope, this context highlights the extensive and ongoing nature of Israel’s targeted land theft and displacement of Palestinian communities across the region.

Like all settler-colonial systems, the demolition of Palestinian homes serves to capture land and resources from the indigenous communities as a form of capitalist primitive accumulation. Similar practices were employed by settlers on Turtle Island (United States), where indigenous lands were seized, and communities were displaced to make way for economic development and resource extraction. In South Africa, apartheid policies forcibly removed black South Africans from their lands, relegating them to bantustans to benefit the white minority's economic interests. As such, Israel is not unique, but is rather carrying out proven methods of indigenous erasure pioneered by earlier settler colonial projects.