Salim Shawamreh woke one morning at 4 a.m. with a gun to his head. Soldiers had entered his house and surrounded his family. Over the course of the morning, Shawamreh watched as two bulldozers demolished his home. He had finished building it eight days before.
Shawamreh shared the story with more than 100 people Tuesday night at Lake Street Church, 607 Lake St. He spoke with Jeff Halper, coordinator of ICAHD, at an event sponsored by Not In My Name, a predominantly Jewish group opposed to the Israeli occupation.
“They destroyed the fence around our house. They destroyed the 52 trees around our house,” Shawamreh said. “They left us with nothing that day.”
This wasn’t the first time Shawamreh, a Palestinian who lives in the Jerusalem area, had seen his house destroyed. The Israeli government had demolished his home on the same land about a month before.
Shawamreh then rebuilt it with the help of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, which provided hundreds of Israeli and Palestinian volunteers, he said. That house was now being destroyed, though.
Shawamreh said he applied to the Israeli authorities three times to build a home on his land — at a cost of $5,000 per application — but was rejected each time. The last time Shawamreh applied, he said officials told him he was missing two signatures on documents that proved he owned the land, but they would not tell him what ones.
Risking demolition of his home, Shawamreh decided to build it without a permit, he said.
Now Shawamreh is traveling across the United States with Halper, trying to build opposition to housing demolition. Halper said 9,000 Palestinian homes have been destroyed by the Israeli government since 1967. He said as an Israeli he feels partly responsible for the demolition.
“This is very hard to convey abroad,” Halper said. “It’s very hard to convey to Israelis.”
The ultimate motive for housing demolition is to demoralize and disperse Palestinians, Halper said.
Likewise, whole families can be destroyed when a house is demolished, Shawamreh said. While displaying pictures of his family on a projector, he said his wife would not speak for two months after their home was destroyed.
One of his daughters is still afraid of the sound of gunfire, even if it is miles away, he said. When Shawamreh tries to tell his daughter he will protect her, she asks how he can do that when he could not stop the destruction of their home.
“If I can’t protect her, who will protect her in the world?” he said.
The Shawamreh family house is currently being rebuilt for the fourth time by ICAHD. Halper said the direct action of ICAHD gives Israelis who oppose the occupation a way to express their dissent.
“Our rebuilding is a political act. It’s not humanitarian,” he said. “It’s an act of resistance.”
Steven Feuerstein, co-founder of Not In Our Name, said a core message of the event is that Palestinians and Israelis can work together for peace.
