Statement by Mr Maxwell Gaylard, the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territory, calling for an end to home demolitions in the West Bank

The United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territory, Mr Maxwell Gaylard, today called for an immediate end to the demolition of Palestinian homes by the authorities of the Government of Israel in the occupied West Bank.

During a visit on 26 January to Anata village on the outskirts of Jerusalem, Mr Gaylard saw the ruins of seven Palestinian homes demolished earlier in the week and met with representatives of the displaced families. He was informed that bulldozers and troops had arrived in the middle of the night of 23 January and that 52 people, including 29 children, had been forced from their homes and the homes then completely destroyed.

For the year 2011, some 622 homes and livelihood structures belonging to Palestinian families were similarly destroyed, forcibly displacing almost 1,100 people, over half of them children, and compromising the livelihoods of several thousand more. Mr Gaylard noted that these figures represent a dramatic increase compared with previous years, and that a much greater number, in the tens of thousands, remain under threat of dispossession, demolition and displacement.