Planning, Restrictions Building Land Permits Confiscation on Use and and Home Access Demolitions Introduction 113 In addition, the applicant must pay the following fees:403 • Building fees; • Development fees (road, sidewalks, water, sewage, etc.); • Betterment levy; • Surveying and registration fee of the Plan for Registration Purposes. The accumulated cost of a building permit is largely unaffordable404, particularly considering the relatively high poverty rate of Palestinians in Jerusalem. Furthermore, the application process can take from months extending to ten years before a final answer arrives.405 If denied a building permit by the Local Committee, the applicant may appeal this decision before the District Appeal Committee within 30 days. In the event that the Local Committee fails to reach a decision on an application, the applicant may also appeal to the District Appeal Committee within three months of submission of the application. If the appeal is rejected by the District Appeal Committee, the applicant may submit a petition to the Court of Administrative Affairs. If the appeal is rejected by the Court of Administrative Affairs, the applicant may submit a petition to the Supreme Court of Israel. Home Demolitions Since 1967, the Israeli authorities have demolished thousands of Palestinian-owned structures, including what the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has estimated to be 2,000 houses in East Jerusalem. The average number of demolition orders per year is almost half the number of issued building permits: For every 2.3 permits issued by the Jerusalem Municipality, they issued one demolition order.406 While not all unauthorized homes have been issued demolition orders, there are currently approximately 1,500 demolition orders pending enforcement in East Jerusalem.407 403 The Civic Coalition for Defending Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem, Aggressive Urbanism, 15. 404 For example, the fees for a permit to construct a small 100 m2 building on a 500 m2 plot of land will amount to approximately NIS 74,000 (USD 17,620). See: OCHA, The Planning Crisis in East Jerusalem, 8; ICAHD estimates the cost of obtaining a permit to build a 200 square meter house on a half dunum (500 square meters) of land in a Palestinian neighborhood of Jerusalem is NIS 70,730 (US $19,930/C15,393). ICAHD, No Home No Homeland: A New Normative Framework for Examining the Practice of Administrative Home Demolitions in East Jerusalem (December 2011), 24; available from http://www.icahd.org/sites/default/files/No%20Home%20No%20Homeland%20V2.0%20(3).pdf. 405 The Civic Coalition for Defending Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem, Aggressive Urbanism, 16. 406 OCHA, Special Focus: East Jerusalem Key Humanitarian Concerns, 38. 407 ICAHD, ‘Israel’s Policy of Demolishing Palestinian Homes Must End’.