08.15.2025 · 6 min reading time
August 15, 2025 · 6 min reading
Data set for 07.16.2025 to 08.15.2025
| Category | Total | 5-day avg | 30-day avg | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total Incidents | 44 | | ||
| Structures | 164 | | ||
| Displaced People | 194 | | ||
| Men Displaced | 59 | | ||
| Women Displaced | 53 | | ||
| Children Displaced | 80 | |
This data set runs from 07.16.2025 to 08.15.2025, covering a 30-day period. This data is for the 30 days prior to and including the publish date, not Year-to-Date. As the data points out, across Jerusalem and the West Bank, displacement has been trending upwards. This, of course, is by design.
This data only reflects administrative home demolitions in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. This doesn't include the mass demolitions of homes in the Gaza Strip, or in places like the Naqab or the Galilee.
By Cody O'Rourke
cody@goodshepherdcollective.org
Over the last month the Israeli state has executed 41 home demolitions, destroying some 155 homes and structures, and displacing 166 Palestinians across the West Bank and East Jerusalem. So far in 2025, the Israeli military has carried out well over 300 military operations across the area, demolishing 1,164 homes and structures, and displacing 1,527 Palestinians. As part of its program of indigenous erasure, the Israeli state is displacing on average 6.76 people a day so far in 2025. While this represents a decrease from 2024's staggering 4,293 total displacements (11.76 daily average), the current pace projects 2,466 displacements by year's end, maintaining the escalating trajectory of dispossession that has characterized the past decade.
These demolitions reveal the systematic nature of settler-colonial expansion. In Qalandiya on August 13, 2025, a two-story home intended for an extended refugee family of 21 people was demolished despite ongoing legal proceedings since 2020. This exemplifies how the permit regime functions as a tool of demographic engineering—Palestinians are denied building permits in Area C (which comprises 60% of the West Bank) while nearby Israeli settlements expand unimpeded.
The forced self-demolitions in Silwan on August 11 particularly illustrate the economic violence inherent in this system. Three refugee families were compelled to destroy their own homes after being fined 270,000 NIS, which they continue paying in installments—a cruel manifestation of how capitalism intersects with colonialism to extract value even from dispossession itself. The families must finance their own erasure or face additional penalties.
Historically, the data reveals an escalating trajectory: from 97 incidents displacing 593 people in 2010 to a projected 589 incidents displacing 2,466 people in 2025. The years 2023-2024 marked unprecedented peaks, with 2024 recording 4,293 displacements. This acceleration coincides with Israel's rightward political shift and the normalization of annexation discourse.
The targeting of agricultural structures, water cisterns, and livestock shelters—as seen in the South Anata Bedouin community demolitions—represents more than housing destruction. It's an assault on Palestinian subsistence economies and connection to land, forcing integration into Israeli-controlled labor markets while clearing territory for settlement expansion.
These demolitions are not only the destruction of homes, but rather all life-sustaining infrastructure. As the summer heat wave persists, Palestinian communities across the West Bank face extreme water shortages, with 73 communities lacking official water networks and relying entirely on water trucking. Since January 2025, Israeli authorities have demolished 128 water and sanitation structures in Area C, including 42 in Hebron governorate alone. The crisis intensified when Israeli settlers destroyed Umm al Kheir Bedouin community's main water connection on August 5, leaving 200 residents without running water. Earlier, water supply reductions by an Israeli company cut Hebron's public water access by over 50%, affecting 800,000 people.
In addition to the water infrastructure, the Israeli state has had a prolonged campaign against Palestinian education. Today, 84 West Bank schools are under pending demolition orders—54 facing complete demolition and 30 partial demolition. These schools serve 12,855 students (including 6,557 girls) and employ 1,076 teachers. Ten threatened schools lie within East Jerusalem's Israeli-defined boundaries, while 74 are in Area C. Beyond demolitions, settler violence targets educational facilities directly. On July 29, settlers forcibly entered Yasir Amro school in Hebron, connecting sewage pipes from their mobile homes into the school's system and disrupting its communications infrastructure. Between January and August 11, 2025, at least eight schools across Nablus, Ramallah, Hebron, and Salfit governorates have suffered settler attacks, compounding the systematic assault on Palestinian education infrastructure.
These demolitions constitute a form of "slow violence"—the gradual, bureaucratized ethnic cleansing that operates through planning law, municipal orders, and administrative detention. It’s the type of violence that liberals accept, because it’s backed by colonial law. Each demolished home, each displaced family, represents another step in the ongoing Nakba, transforming East Jerusalem and Area C into landscapes where Palestinian existence itself becomes illegal, clearing the ground for exclusive Jewish settlement in the colonial project's relentless territorial appetite.
August 13, 2025
Location: Qalandiya (Area C, Jerusalem)
Description: The Israeli Civil Administration demolished a two-story residential house, severely affecting four refugee households comprising 21 people, including 10 children. Destroyed: a 240m² home (170m² first floor, 70m² second floor) built with wooden panels, metal sheets, and brick-tile roofing. The house was nearly complete and intended to shelter an extended family—a father and his three sons' families. The family received a stop-work order in 2020 and hired legal representation, but authorities demolished the structure without issuing a final demolition order.
August 13, 2025
Location: Silwan, Ein al-Louzeh area (East Jerusalem)
Description: The Israeli Jerusalem Municipality demolished two agricultural structures, affecting a Palestinian household of seven people, including five children. Destroyed: a 40m² poultry house built with metal sheets and columns, and a steel staircase connecting adjacent plots. This land had already suffered two demolitions in 2024. Israeli forces had repeatedly stormed the area, threatening the family before executing the demolition despite posted orders.
August 12, 2025
Location: Silwad (Area C, Ramallah)
Description: The Israeli Civil Administration demolished three structures, affecting four non-refugee households comprising 18 people, including eight children. Destroyed: a two-story reinforced concrete residential house with stone cladding (including ground-floor water cistern and storage, plus second-floor apartment), a construction materials shop, and a 1960s-era agricultural water cistern with 120m² concrete catchment area built in 2008. Despite the family obtaining a building permit after a 2017 stop-work order, authorities carried out the demolition without issuing a demolition order.
August 11, 2025
Location: Silwan (East Jerusalem)
Description: Israeli authorities forced three Palestinian refugee families to self-demolish their homes, displacing 13 people, including four children. Destroyed: a 155m² residential house built in 2000 (divided into 85m² and 70m² apartments) and a 60m² section of another home (bathroom, kitchen, bedroom, and living room added to a 1940s house). The families received demolition orders in 2005 and were fined 270,000 NIS, which they continue paying in installments. Jerusalem Municipality issued final orders in July 2025 and threatened additional penalties, forcing the families to destroy their own homes.
August 11, 2025
Location: South Anata Bedouins/Wa'ar al Beik (Area C, Jerusalem)
Description: The Israeli Civil Administration demolished two animal shelters, affecting two non-refugee households comprising 16 people, including 12 children. Destroyed: two livestock structures built in 2015 from cement blocks, metal sheets, and wood, along with animal troughs, drinking tables, and a metal gate. The families received stop-work orders in 2019 and hired lawyers to obtain permits, but authorities executed the demolition without issuing demolition orders.
