Demolition notices served in Kafr Aqab and Qalandia camp

Demolition notices reached a number of Palestinian houses and other buildings in Kafr Aqab, north of occupied Jerusalem, on Tuesday, in the part of the town that lies against the wall. The Jerusalem Governorate reported a second set the same evening on Matar Street, inside the adjoining Qalandia refugee camp, and gave no further detail.

The notices were handed out in the course of an incursion into both the camp and the town. Soldiers spread through the streets and residential blocks, forced their way into houses and searched them, and put questions to residents where they stood. Military vehicles stayed in position across the area while the operation ran.

At the vocational training centre the UN refugee agency runs in Kafr Aqab, 40 members of staff and other people found on the premises were held and questioned, local accounts said, before the site was emptied and work began on bringing down parts of it.

The agency had warned in advance that the Israeli plan for the site would require most of the centre to be demolished. The complex houses teaching, vocational and health facilities together on one plot, so a demolition there removes three services at once rather than one.

Both the camp and the town went through a wide-ranging Israeli military operation earlier this month, which brought raids on homes, arrests, damage across the area and the pulling down of buildings and houses. Several homes were turned into military posts while it lasted.

That earlier round is what gives Tuesday's notices their weight. It removed structures and occupied others; the notices mark buildings that are still standing and still lived in, on the same streets and within the same few weeks. For the households holding one, the question is no longer whether the area is a target but how long the paper takes to be acted on.