Israeli forces on Monday issued five demolitions orders to Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem, the owners said.

Akram al-Shurafa told Ma’an that his home in al-Tur, which was built in 1938 and inherited from his grandparents, was slated for demolition.

The property has all the required legal documents and is registered in his mother’s name, he said.

Al-Shurafa says the demolition order is a way of targeting him after he was recently exiled from the city of Jerusalem for five months, together with four other Palestinian community activists.

No reason was given for the exile of Faris Abu Ghannam, Daoud al-Ghoul, Majd Darwish, and Salih Dirbas.

Meanwhile, Israel issued two other demolition orders to Talal al-Sayyad and Basil al-Sayyad despite the fact neither of them own any properties.

Another man, Abdullah al-Hadera, also received a demolition order for his al-Tur home, which was built over 50 years ago, and Nadia al-Moghrabi, who was recently detained with her daughter, also received a demolition order for her home in al-Tur.

The Israeli municipality last Wednesday distributed demolition orders to 11 houses, some as old as 30 years, in the Silwan neighborhood for “building without permits.”

Israel rarely grants construction permits to Palestinians in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and regularly demolishes structures built without permits.

Israeli bulldozers have demolished at least 359 Palestinian structures in the West Bank so far in 2014, according to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions.

During the 1967 war, Israel captured East Jerusalem from Jordan, occupied it, and later annexed it in a move never recognized abroad.

(Ma’an – www.maannews.net)