Israeli forces demolished a house in East Jerusalem on Tuesday on the pretext that it was being built without a permit, a local official said.

Fakhri Abu Diab, head of the Committee for the Defense of Silwan, told official news agency Wafa that Israeli bulldozers arrived early Tuesday and destroyed the home, which was under construction at the time. 

The house, located in the Silwan neighborhood south of Jerusalem's Old City, was uninhabited at the time.

"The ruthless occupation is trying at any price to achieve its goal of displacing the indigenous people from their city and giving their land to settlers," Abu Diab said.

A 2011 report by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel found said that Israeli authorities have revoked the status of 14,084 Palestinian Jerusalemites since 1967, no longer permitting them to live in the city.

Israel captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day War and later annexed it in a move never recognized by the rest of the world.