With all eyes on Gaza, demolitions advance across West Bank

Over the past month, the demolition machine never paused. Between 28 April and 27 May, the army carried out 50 separate demolition operations—an average of one and two-thirds raids every day—erasing 169 Palestinian structures. Each sunrise brought the almost certain prospect of another five or six family homes, animal pens or water tanks being reduced to rubble.

The human toll was immediate: 211 people were forced out of their dwellings, 109 of them children who awoke to find classrooms replaced by makeshift tents. Men (51) and women (48) were displaced in equal measure, underlining that entire households are being uprooted, not isolated individuals. On a typical day, seven Palestinians lost the legal right to sleep in their own beds.

Since 2010, Israel’s demolition regime has moved from sporadic displacements in support of specific settlement expansion to a near-daily instrument of domination and erasure. Fifteen years ago, bulldozers levelled Palestinian homes roughly once every four days; today, they rumble into a village, refugee camp, or city neighbourhood almost twice a day. 2024 marked the sharpest inflection point: 554 incidents, 1,773 structures demolished, and more than 4,200 people, half of them children, forced into precarity. That single-year spike did not ebb with the calendar; through 27 May 2025, the military has already logged 247 demolitions. If the current tempo holds, the year will close at roughly 613 incidents and 2,000 structures—new records for frequency and material destruction across the West Bank and East Jerusalem. (A reminder, these numbers omit the vast destruction across the Naqab, where Palestinians with Israeli citizenship are also having their homes demolished at an industrial scale. Very few structures remain in Gaza.)

Yet the raw totals tell only part of the story. 2025’s first five months show a subtle but revealing shift: each operation displaces fewer people while destroying slightly more structures. Daily averages of demolished buildings hold steady (5.6), but average displacements have fallen from 12 persons a day over the past 12 months to just over seven persons a day since March. In practical terms, this means soldiers are arriving with demolition orders for community infrastructure, not just homes,  targeting animal shelters, water lines, solar panels, and livelihood structures in addition to homes. The policy reads less like mass expulsion and more like strangulation: make rebuilding impossible, sever income sources, and wait for “voluntary” displacement.

Children remain the most visible victims. So far in 2025 they constitute 49% of those displaced—almost identical to the last 30- and 90-day snapshots—embedding trauma at a generational scale. Gender distribution among adults is strikingly even, underscoring that entire households, not isolated “suspects”, are the deliberate target.

Looking at data going back from 2009, three structural trends emerge:

1. Acceleration after 2021 with the emergence of a well-financed settler movement getting record donations through the US non-profit system. Before then, demolitions hovered in the low-400s for a decade; post-May-2021 resistance and the far-right turn in Israeli politics coincide with a breakneck climb to the mid-500s.

2. Convergence of military and civil bureaucracies. Demolitions are happening at an alarming rate; from 57 in 2010 to a projected 226 this year, the data shows that demolitions are no longer exceptional punishments but routine administrative practice as a means to cleanse the land of the indigenous people.

3. Shift from people-centred to asset-centred targeting. The widening gap between structures razed and people uprooted hints at a strategy aimed at eroding the economic base of Palestinian life, consistent with de-facto annexation ambitions in Area C.

In sum, the numbers capture a policy maturing into a systemic machinery of slow, grinding removal—less dramatic than mass expulsions, but meticulously designed to make Palestinian presence untenable, one demolished livelihood at a time.

Recent Home Demolition Incidents

May 27, 2025
Location: Qalandiya Refugee Camp, East Jerusalem
Description: Israeli Civil Administration units, escorted by soldiers, demolished five livelihood structures without prior notice: a cement-based car-wash bay, a bus repurposed as a mini-cafeteria, a cement guard room, a metal-sheet car garage and a metal shipping container used as a resting room. An advertising panel was also torn down. Four households (18 people, including eight children) lost critical income sources and shelter components.

May 26, 2025
Location: Khallet al Louza community, south-east of Bethlehem
Description: Claiming a lack of permits, Israeli forces razed an inhabited home, its concrete foundations, a water cistern, two animal shelters and a retaining wall. One family of nine (six children) was displaced; a second family of five was affected. Troops also destroyed four water tanks, a metal fence and uprooted 30 trees. The homeowner’s 25-year-old brother was beaten and hospitalized during the operation, despite the family’s ongoing legal appeal through St Yves.

May 22, 2025
Location: Baqat al Hatab village, east of Qalqiliya
Description: In a punitive attack, soldiers detonated a two-storey, 240 m² home belonging to a Palestinian accused of killing an Israeli soldier, along with a neighbouring 150 m² house that became uninhabitable. Two Zinco animal shelters (90 m² and 50 m²) were also destroyed. Two refugee households (nine people, including two children) were displaced, and at least ten surrounding homes suffered blast damage.

May 22, 2025
Location: Batn al Hawa quarter, Silwan neighbourhood
Description: Under threat of heavy municipal fines, a Palestinian family self-demolished 10 m² extensions on the second and third floors of their 36 m² apartments. The additions had served as crucial bedrooms. The loss rendered the dwellings inadequate and displaced three girls (ages 8, 13 and 14). Despite a year-long legal effort, the courts rejected all permit applications and levied a 6,000 NIS penalty for “building without a permit.”

May 21, 2025
Location: Furush Beit Dajan, east of Nablus
Description: Without prior orders, the Civil Administration leveled a 3,500 m³ earth-lined agricultural pond that irrigated 60 dunums of orchards and vegetables. Pumps, valves and parts of the water network were seized or destroyed. A non-refugee farming household of five (including one child) lost its main water source—only four months after rebuilding the pond following an earlier demolition in January.

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