A UN agency has asked Israel to freeze demolitions of Arab homes in east Jerusalem, citing a housing crisis in the part of the city claimed as a future Palestinian capital. Israel annexed east Jerusalem after capturing it in the 1967 Mideast War. Israel expropriated one-third of the annexed land to build housing for 195,000 Jews. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says in a report Friday that only 13 percent of east Jerusalem is zoned for Palestinian construction. Twenty-eight percent of Palestinian homes are built in violation of zoning restrictions and face possible demolition. The report says about 1,500 demolition orders are currently pending. Jerusalem's mayor says he enforces the law evenly in Arab and Jewish neighborhoods. Meanwhile, Israeli warplanes on Friday launched strikes against two smuggling tunnels along Gaza's border with Egypt after militants fired two rockets at Israel, a military spokesman said. Witnesses in Gaza's border city of Rafah confirmed the air raid and said there were no immediate reports of casualties. “We attacked two tunnels,” the military spokesman said. “This attack comes after a rocket attack last night and another today.” The Palestinians have used hundreds of tunnels to ferry food and other supplies into the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, which has been under a crippling blockade since June 2007, when the militants pledged to destroy Israel, violently assumed power in the territory. Israel says the tunnels are also used to smuggle rockets and other weapons into the densely populated enclave. The network of tunnels was extensively bombed by Israel during its 22-day war against Hamas in December and January, when more than 1,400 Palestinians were killed, according to Palestinian figures.
