Photostory: home demolitions in Lydd

Photostory, The Electronic Intifada, 6 January 2011

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11716.shtml

On 13 December 2010, Israeli bulldozers, flanked by hundreds of municipal, riot squad and border police forces, demolished seven homes belonging to the Abu Eid family in Lydd, a city a few miles east of Tel Aviv.

The demolition, which took several hours, subsequently displaced 67 members of the entire family, including dozens of children, during one of the worst rainstorms of the season. Dozens of other Palestinian homes have been demolished over the years in Lydd.

Lydd is a so-called "mixed city," as is the neighboring city of Ramle. Both are home to a significant population of Palestinians holding Israeli citizenship living in segregated areas, separated from the Jewish majority. Palestinian residents of these communities have been chronically discriminated against and brutalized by police.

Oren Ziv, a photographer with the ActiveStills photography collective who witnessed and photographed the demolition told The Electronic Intifada: "I've been documenting [home demolitions] for seven years and this was one of the biggest demolitions I've ever seen." Ziv added that when the bulldozers finished demolishing the seventh house, children were starting to come back from school only to find their homes reduced to rubble.

The images included in this photostory were all taken by Ziv on the day of and the day after Israel's destruction of the Abu Eid family's homes in Lydd.

Related Links

• Israel forces Palestinians to demolish their own homes," The Electronic Intifada (31 December 2010)