ISM Denmark
4 August 2009
On Monday 4 August at 5pm approximately 20 danish solidarity activist gathered in front of the Danish foreign ministry to call for a condemnation of the eviction of another two families in Sheikh Jarrah, occupied East Jerusalem.
The activists carried a banner saying “Stop Ethnic Cleansing” in danish as well as signs asking the politicians to actively condemn settlements and evictions in The Occupied Palestinian Territories.
The manifestation remained calm for the hour and half it lasted.
After the media storm the injuries and arrest of a Danish solidarity activist in Sheikh Jarrah caused in Denmark one danish party have suggested in parlaiment an official condemnation of the evictions of the Palestinians in East Jerusalem.
The eviction of the Hanoun and Ghawe family made 53 persons homeless, made them refugees again.
The 28 houses in Sheikh Jarrah threatened with evictions are build by the Jordanian kingdom and UNWRA in 1956 as a housing project for Palestinian refugees from 1948.
All the families live with a knowledge about where their family home was 61 but have no possibility of moving back to that house since it has been given to Israel in 1948. Despite of that, the houses that were given to the Palestinian refugees in return, are now being taken by Israeli settlers on claims that the land they are build on was owned by jewish people in the 18th century. The settler organization that claim the houses have no legal evidence for the claims, contrary the Palestinians just evicted, that have showed documents in court of the changing owners of the land since the otteman era.
Israeli settlers moved into the houses of the evicted families on Sunday afternoon only a few hours after the families had been violently removed from their homes by Israeli forces.
The US, the UK and the UN have all condemned the evictions of the Palestinian families as they represent an obstacle for achieving peace in the region as well as jet again shows Israels disregard for international law.