JERUSALEM — For five years, Inas Jubran and her husband, a butcher from Ramallah, had saved to afford their shiny new three-bedroom apartment in East Jerusalem, thrilled to provide a safer home for their four sons than the crime-ridden refugee camp they had left.

But two months ago, the Israeli Army warned them to leave. The city of Jerusalem plans to demolish their apartment tower and three others to make room for a new road that it says will improve traffic flow. On Wednesday, soldiers were seen massing nearby, suggesting a forcible evacuation could come at any moment.

Ms. Jubran, 33, sitting in a nearly bare room amid empty cardboard packing boxes, was worried sick. Her family would lose their life savings, she said, and had nowhere to go.

“My mind,” she said, “is going to explode.”

Demolition of unauthorized construction in East Jerusalem, long a source of conflict between the city government and the quarter’s mostly Arab residents, is routine.