Ben Gvir Films Himself in Bulldozer as Israel Demolishes East Jerusalem Building, Displacing 70

Soldiers surrounded the five-storey building in al-Tur at around 3am, forcing open apartment doors without knocking, according to resident Fayez Khalfawi. By morning the building was rubble, and Israel's national security minister had filmed himself riding the bulldozer that helped level it.

"Women and children were asleep and were terrified when the apartments were stormed," Khalfawi told Middle East Eye. "Some women rushed out without headscarves due to the shock of the raid, while the children screamed and cried inconsolably."

The building in the al-Tur neighborhood, on the Mount of Olives about a kilometer east of the Old City, housed 10 apartments and roughly 70 people, most of them women and children, according to Middle East Eye's reporting and Khalfawi's account. Residents say they were given a final eviction notice on Monday, less than 24 hours before the demolition, and were prevented from retrieving belongings as the building came down.

"We are searching through the rubble for our clothes, hoping we might be able to retrieve them," Khalfawi said.

Itamar Ben Gvir arrived at the site flanked by armed police, climbed into a bulldozer, and posted video of himself inside it on X.

"This morning, I arrived together with the governance bulldozers in the al-Tur neighbourhood of East Jerusalem, to make sure on the ground that my policy is being implemented," Ben Gvir wrote, adding that over the past year and a half authorities had demolished 10,000 structures and reclaimed land equivalent in size to Tel Aviv and Givatayim combined.

The demolition order traces back to 2011, when Israeli authorities first cited a lack of building permits. Families say they applied for permits more than four times over the years and were denied each time, while also paying tens of thousands of dollars annually in fines, penalties, and taxes. Their legal challenges in Israeli courts were ultimately rejected.

The Palestinian Authority's Jerusalem Governorate condemned Ben Gvir's personal involvement as "official incitement" and accused him of electioneering ahead of Israel's elections later this month, at the expense of Palestinian residents' rights. The Governorate says Israel has carried out 427 demolitions in Jerusalem between January and the end of September.

A UN humanitarian affairs report (OCHA) found that Israeli authorities demolished 86 Palestinian structures across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, in a single week last month, displacing 147 people, 73 of them children.

Amjad Shihab, a political science professor at Al-Quds University, said Palestinians in Jerusalem face near-total barriers to building legally. "Any attempt to build without a permit results in immediate demolition," he said, noting that more than 70 percent of Palestinian residents of Jerusalem live below the poverty line.

Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem is not recognized under international law, and the Fourth Geneva Convention bars an occupying power from making permanent changes to occupied territory outside narrow military or humanitarian exceptions.