Like every society in the world, the concept of home forms the center of Palestinian family life, social identity, and economic security, serving as the primary space where generations are raised, and livelihoods are sustained. However, home carries additional layers specific to the Palestinian context, where the connection to the land is struggled for and maintained. The home, particularly in the context of prolonged Israeli occupation and recurring displacement of Palestinian communities, embodies the homeland itself, and the persistence to stay rooted in it.
For decades, since the outset of its occupation of the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), the Israeli authorities have employed home demolition policies as a central tool to displace Palestinian communities and assert geographic control over Palestinian lands, notably in Area C in the Occupied West Bank, under “regulatory” or “security” pretexts, or as a means of collective punishment.
This policy has significantly harmed Palestinian society. Beyond the loss of a family shelter, it causes the disruption of an entire social and economic ecosystem, stripping families of their primary asset, the home, while eroding financial resilience and fracturing community ties. The consequences reverberate across every aspect of daily life, affecting access to livelihoods, education, healthcare, and social support networks. Families often face immediate displacement, increased indebtedness, and prolonged economic insecurity as they struggle to rebuild their lives under conditions of heightened vulnerability.
Yet, as devastating as the consequences of home demolitions are to the entirety of the Palestinian collective, their impacts are not experienced equally. Home demolitions function as a gendered tool of dispossession, with women bearing a disproportionate share of their social, economic, and psychological consequences. Due to their central social and economic roles within households and communities, the impact of demolition extends beyond housing loss to include the erosion of household-based income sources, increased caregiving burdens, reduced access to education and employment, and heightened exposure to violence and social marginalization. As such, home demolitions have distinct gendered consequences that deepen pre-existing inequalities in the context of violent displacement resulting from the demolitions.
Beyond the statistics and quantitative data, this report seeks to shed light on the economic, social, and gender-based consequences of house demolitions in the West Bank following 7 October 2023, with particular attention to the double burden borne by women. It seeks to demonstrate how Israeli demolition policies serve as part of a systematic process that dismantles family and community support networks, deepens economic and humanitarian vulnerability, and produces conditions marked by poverty, dependency, and forced displacement.
It further examines these practices in light of international humanitarian law and international human rights law to assess their impact on the fundamental rights of affected Palestinian individuals, families, and communities and the entire society.