This is the story of a small piece of land in the north of Lud, a formerly Palestinian, now mostly Jewish city, some 13 km southeast of Tel Aviv. The land, now featuring seven unfinished houses, has been owned by the same family since the days before the inception of the state of Israel. In a land survey conducted by he British Mandate in 1929 it was registered under the name of El-Baher El-Bargithy, grandfather of the current occupants. The family then used it to grow vegetables and olive trees. In 1952, during the turmoil that the city experienced following the massive deportation and land grab of Palestinian residents following the war of 1948, the land was expropriated and handed over to the Israel Land Administration. The owner, who only learned of the expropriation some fifteen years later, sued the state, but his death, soon thereafter, ended the legal procedure.

The Israel Land Administration never made any use of El-Bargithy's land, while the family kept on using it in much the same way it always had. Only much later, during the legal proceedings that followed the demolition orders issued for the houses that were subsequently built, did El-Bargithy's heirs find out that their land had been expropriated a second time, in 1995, without negotiation or compensation.

Several of El-Baher El-Bargithy's heirs built houses for their families on some of the inherited land at about the same time that Anterpreneur David Appel (now standing trial for bribary of, among others, Lud mayor Benny Regev) built the neighboring Ganei Aviv compound, featuring apartment buildings of several thousand apartments total. In 2002, seven other family members started building houses on the remaining part of the land. They did so in spite of the fact that they had no construction permit, due to the severe housing shortage inflicted on the Arab population of Lud, the city's policy of not granting construction permits in areas inhabited by Arabs, and the discriminatory mortgage terms that banks offer to Arab clients.

The city of Lud, having proposed no alternative to the owners, engaged in a prolonged legal battle against them. Although a supreme court judge acknowledged during the proceedings the problematic nature of the treatment of Arab citizens with respect to housing and construction laws the court, bound by the state law, had no choice but to rule in favor of the city. It did, however grant the defendants a period of six months, during which they could try and legalize their houses  with the planning authorities. The house owners presented a plan, which was rejected by the city's planning committee without consideration, and the six months elapsed before the planning process was exhausted.

Currently, there is a demolition order in effect against the seven houses. This means that the owners are expected to demoish their own homes and, failing that, the city may demolish their homes at any time.

A judicial demolition order, being a court ruling, cannot be reversed by a non-judicial authority. One course of action that remains available to the owners of the seven houses is to return to court with an appeal for a postponement of the demolition, during which they can continue their effort to legalize their houses. Such appeals are normally denied when presented by one side only, but if the other side (i.e. the city) endorses the appeal, the court is highly likely to accept it.

Legalizing the houses will provide the dozens of people and children that live in them with a fair solution to their housing problem. On the other hand, demolishing them without providing any alternative will instantanously create a new problem of homelesness in a city that already faces severe welfare problems.

In 2002 prime minister Ariel Sharon declared Lud a personal project of his, and promised it preferential funding and additional land. In return, Sharon demanded that the house demolition policy be reinstated, in order to fight what he dubbed the 'demographic danger' embodied by the steadily encreasing Arab poputation.