Palestinians inspect the rubble of two demolished houses after an Israeli army operation in the West Bank city of Qalqilia. (Khaleel Reash, Maan Images)

In the first hours of dawn, Nader Elayan was woken by a call from a neighbor warning him to hurry to the house he had almost finished building. By the time he arrived, it was too late: a bulldozer was tearing down the walls. More than 100 Israeli security guards held back local residents.

The demolition, carried out four years ago, has left Mr Elayan, his wife, Fidaa, who is now pregnant, and their two young children with nowhere to live but a single room in his brother's cramped home. It is the only land he owns and he had invested all his savings in building the now destroyed house.

Over the past few years, the Elayans' fate has been shared by two dozen other families in the Palestinian village of Anata, on the outskirts of East Jerusalem. Hundreds more families have demolition orders hanging over their homes. "Not one person in my neighbourhood has a [building] permit," Mr Elayan, 37, said.

The problem of house demolitions affects Palestinians throughout the occupied territories. But according to Hatem Abdelkader, an adviser to Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister, the situation is particularly acute in the East Jerusalem area.

He noted that Israel's policy of refusing building permits to many of the 250,000 Palestinians in East Jerusalem has resulted in the classification of 20,000 city homes as illegal since the occupation began in 1967.

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Last year alone, the Jerusalem municipality issued more than 1,000 demolition orders for "illegal dwellings". It is believed that three out of every four Palestinian homes in the city are now built without a permit.

"Illegal building is simply a pretext for destroying Palestinian families’ homes and lives," says Jeff Halper, head of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD).

"The demolitions are part of a policy to stop the natural expansion of Palestinian communities in and around Jerusalem, freeing up the maximum amount of land for use by Israeli settlers," Halper continues. "The demolitions increase the pressure on Palestinians to move into the West Bank, so that they will lose their residency rights in the city."

In an act of defiance, Halper's organization and 40 international volunteers helped the Elayans to rebuild their home this week in an attempt to highlight what the committee calls the "quiet ethnic cleansing" of East Jerusalem. The work was carried out during a two-week summer camp funded by the Spanish government. Madrid also paid for 18 Spanish volunteers to participate.

"This is the first time a government has supported the rebuilding of an 'illegal' Palestinian home demolished by the Israeli authorities," Halper says.

The issue of house demolitions is back in the spotlight now after two separate incidents in July in which Palestinians, both of whom were residents of Jerusalem, rampaged through the city in bulldozers, killing three Israelis and injuring many more. Although the two Palestinians were shot dead at the scene, Israeli officials, including Ehud Barak, the defence minister, are calling for their homes to be destroyed, making their families homeless, to deter others from following in their path.

Such punitive destruction of homes was stopped in 2005, under the threat of legal challenge, but not before some 270 homes were razed on security grounds in the first years of the intifada.

According to Halper, however, the use of demolitions against Palestinians accused of illegal building is a far more significant problem. "We estimate that there have been at least 18,000 homes destroyed during the four decades of occupation."

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