Court looks at 'biased' housing policy

It was a large house with three floors and freshly painted pale blue shutters that had just been built for a family of 17.

But after a few hours' work by a pair of Israeli bulldozers, all that was left was a mountain of rubble and twisted metal.

Like more than half of the homes in Ad Deirat-Rifaiyya - a village of 1,800 residents on a windswept hillside in the southern West Bank - the house was built on land owned by the villagers but without Israel's approval.