Violence and domestic space: demolition and destruction of homes in the occupied Palestinian territories

This paper is about the violence that occurs when houses are invaded, occupied or demolished. It is also concerned with violence concealed in acts of planning and other means of drawing boundaries around communities and properties where the intention is to exclude part of a population and dispossess them of their property, history and memory. The focus for this paper is the Israeli/Palestinian conflict where violence is deeply inscribed in the urban fabric. It has grown from work carried out under the guidance of an Israeli peace group, ‘The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions’ (ICAHD), a non-violent direct-action organisation, which specifically opposes the policy of house demolitions and questions the laws, rules, planning policies, security measures and language that allows or enables such violence to occur. The paper provides a description of the impact of such policies which are all used to dispossess and displace people from their homes.