A Palestinian camping in an ancient cave near Jerusalem says he has been told by Israeli authorities to get out because the hillside is slated for a housing development and his “illegal” home will be demolished.
The predicament of Abdel Fattah Abed Rabbo, a 48-year-old father of 10, highlights the dispute between Israel and Palestinians living in the steep hills between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, on land the Israelis annexed in 1980.
Abed Rabbo says he was actually brought up in the cave by his parents but occupies it now simply as a way of upholding his claim to 5 acres of stony hillside. His family lives in an apartment in a Bethlehem refugee camp.
“Three days ago, Israeli building planners came. They started landscaping this entire area,” he told Reuters Television this week.
“The purpose is, of course, to build an Israeli settlement, called Givat Yael, which is to become the biggest settlement in the Jerusalem area,” he said.
Abed Rabbo says he received his first demolition warning five years ago, and got a follow-up notice last December. In the meantime, he says, Israeli authorities have three times knocked down the tent camp he put up on the land at al-Walajeh.
He is tangled in a complex legal maze that Palestinians say is really all about national rights but Israel insists is simply about property rights and unauthorized building.
The land straddles the 1948 Green Line which formed Israel’s eastern border at the establishment of the Jewish state. It lies just west of the Jewish settlement of Gilo, a suburb community of Jerusalem which is actually in the occupied West Bank.
The World Court has ruled that Israel’s settlements are illegal. Israel rejects that and officials say, in any case, the community planned for Givat Yael will not be a “settlement”, since the land has been part of Jerusalem for nearly 30 years.
Town planning
Givat Yael is planned to house 45,000 people, with a commercial zone and sports centre. The Interior Ministry’s district planning office recently granted final approval.
“They consider my presence here a problem, because they want to be build 14,000 housing units on al-Walajeh lands,” said Abed Rabbo. “I tell them the owners of this land are here, they are the rightful owners, and you’ve no right to build here.”
Some 500,000 Israelis now live in settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, whose legitimacy is also disputed by the United Nations, the United States and most major powers.
City councilman for East Jerusalem Yakir Segev rejected claims that the hillside will become yet another settlement, taking land the Palestinians want for a future state.
“First of all, it’s not a settlement,” he said. “It’s a neighborhood within the municipal borders of Jerusalem.”
“Second of all … they were given court orders — not military orders … It’s not a matter of political dispute or political argument as far as we are concerned,” he said.
The Israeli-run Jerusalem municipality has rejected a request by al-Walajeh Palestinians to legalise 95 homes in the village built without a permit and at risk of demolition.
“The village will disappear, because most of the houses are under the master plan of Gival Yael,” says Meir Margalit, a left-wing opposition member of Jerusalem City Council.
Palestinians say Israeli planners have offered a number of concessions in return for consent, including retroactive permits for homes already built, a change in the route of Israel’s West Bank separation barrier in the vicinity of the village, and easier access to Jerusalem.
So far they have refused these offers.
If al-Walajeh is legally part of Jerusalem, its residents might expect to have Jerusalem identification cards. But they do not “because of the Givat Yael project”, says Margalit.
“It would be more difficult to expel them from their land if they had Israeli ID’s.”
And without a Jerusalem identity, Abed Rabbo is an illegal resident in his own cave.
In addition to its weekly confrontations with the Israeli army, the village of Bilin has taken its case to a Quebec court. (Silan Dallal/Activestills.org)Abdullah Abu Rahme can no longer sleep in his own home. A member of the Bilin Popular Committee Against the Wall, Abu Rahme explained that since Bilin began its legal proceedings in Canada, Israeli soldiers have made life especially difficult for residents of the small West Bank village.
“[Israeli soldiers] came to my home and they tried to arrest me. They’re destroying my home. It’s not allowed to me to sleep in my home. I feel very bad about this. I’m suffering from this case until now,” he said. “I took my family to another place. It’s very difficult for me.”
Still, Abu Rahme and the villagers of Bilin are pushing forward in their nonviolent struggle against the Israeli occupation by appealing a Quebec Superior Court ruling in their case against two Canadian companies. The residents of Bilin are suing Green Park International and Green Mount International, two companies that, they argue, should be held legally accountable for illegally building residential homes and settlement infrastructure on the village’s land, and marketing these buildings for the purpose of transferring exclusively Israeli civilians therein.
Bilin is a small Palestinian village of approximately 1,800 residents located 12 kilometers west of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. Since the early 1980s, about 56 percent of Bilin’s agricultural land has been designated by Israel as “State Land.” It has been used to build the Jewish-only settlement Modiin Illit, which holds the largest settler population in the occupied West Bank with more than 42,000 residents and plans to grow to up to 150,000.
Israel began building its wall in the occupied West Bank in 2003. The wall literally cuts the village of Bilin in half. Since 2005, the residents of Bilin have held weekly demonstrations every Friday against the wall, garnering international attention and support for their efforts. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that the wall was illegal under international law in a 2004 advisory opinion. A year later, the Israeli high court also ruled that the wall’s route through Bilin was illegal and should be moved closer to the boundary of Modiin Illit. However, neither the ICJ nor the Israeli high court rulings were implemented.
The case against the Canadian companies was heard in Montreal in June 2009. However, Judge Louis-Paul Cullen found that the Israeli high court, not the Quebec Superior Court, was the best venue to hear the case. This ruling was centered on the issue of forum non conveniens, the Latin term for “inappropriate forum.” According to Emily Schaeffer, an Israeli attorney representing Bilin, the term states that “if there’s a better forum for the case, for various reasons, then the case should not be held or heard in the court it’s being brought to but rather in another court.”
Schaeffer maintains that the Quebec court is the only legal forum that can possibly hear the case, since both companies are domiciled in the province. “Israeli courts have repeatedly refused to examine the issue of the legality of settlements. Because that’s the issue for the case in Canada, there’s no other forum than the home of the companies who are registered and domiciled in Montreal,” she said.
“The decision to appeal is because we believe we’re right. We believe that the judge made an error. Our position is that the Israeli courts cannot and will not hear this case. Legality of settlements is not an issue that can be brought to Israeli courts,” Schaeffer added.
The Canadian federal legal system has adopted the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court under the Canadian Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Statute. The Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 bars an occupying power from transferring part of its civilian population to the territory it is occupying. To do so is considered a war crime under the Rome Statute.
Setting a precedent
While the overall decision was disappointing, the judge’s sub-rulings can be seen as minor victories, Schaeffer explained. “The village of Bilin prevailed in almost every single aspect, and in two of the three motions. Something that we took as a victory [was that] corporations do have liability under Canadian law for their actions and violations of international law abroad. That’s precedence-setting,” she added.
For Schaeffer, a positive ruling would mean setting a precedent to stop other international companies from abetting Israeli war crimes. “If Bilin succeeds in this appeal, it will make more waves [in Israel] and that’s a good thing because what we also want is to discourage other companies from taking similar actions and taking part in war crimes in the occupied territories,” she explained.
Schaeffer added that she was as of yet unsure whether the entire case will be open to appeal, or if only the issue of forum non conveniens would be examined, and that the appeal will likely take several months before being processed.
The struggle continues
According to Freda Guttman, a Montreal-based activist who recently spent three months in Palestine with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), being involved with the Bilin campaign in Canada felt like something she needed to do. “It’s a very important cause. If they win this, it will set a precedent not just in Canada but everywhere. It feels like something very important to be involved in,” Guttman said.
Spending time in Bilin demonstrated to Guttman just how strenuous it is for residents to keep fighting the occupation, and the immense burden it places on their daily lives. “My excitement about [the appeal] is sort of tempered by the fact that I see the toll it’s taking on peoples’ lives there. They never know when the army is going to come. It’s just constant,” she said.
For his part, Abdullah Abu Rahme explained that the ruling by the Canadian court left the villagers of Bilin feeling disheartened and upset, but they haven’t lost hope.
“We are very sad about the decision about refusing the case in Canada but we hope to have another decision. We hope to [be restored] our rights and to have justice in this court,” he said. Abu Rahme added that the outpouring of support from international activists has been a huge motivator for residents of Bilin, who are organizing the village’s biggest demonstration yet for the five-year anniversary of their weekly nonviolent demonstrations next February.
Guttman, describing the Canadian legal proceedings as “a roller coaster,” said she too is prepared for the long haul. “I don’t think it’s going to be easy and I don’t think it’s going to be quick. [Bilin is] a very important movement at the forefront of the struggle,” she said.
According to Abu Rahme, that struggle will continue until justice is achieved in Bilin, the West Bank and all of Palestine. “Every Friday we are there. We want to continue our struggle. Until now there is no justice, for the wall and the settlements. We will continue our nonviolent struggle with the support of the internationals and our faith to have justice and to remove the wall and the settlements and the occupation.”
Jillian Kestler-D’Amours is a student and freelance journalist based in Montreal. More of her work can be found at jkdamours.wordpress.com.
It’s the most terrifying place I’ve ever been in… it’s a horrifyingly sad place because of the desperation and misery of the way people live. I was unprepared for camps that are much worse than anything I saw in South Africa.– Professor Edward Said 1993 [1]
They may be living but they’re not alive. – Journalist Philip Rizk [2]
Gaza is a place that needs a million psychologists.- Ayed, a psychotherapist from Northern Gaza [3]
More than 95% children in Gaza experienced artillery shelling in their area or sonic booms of low flying jets.
Over 40 years of Israeli military occupation have had a devastating effect on Gaza; airstrikes, artillery shelling, ground invasions, jet flybys and their sonic booms have all led to an epidemic of suffering among Gaza’s most vulnerable inhabitants.[4]
Soon after the recent winter Israeli assault, a group of scholars at the University of Washington discussed different aspects of the situation in Gaza and the occupied Palestinian Territories. Dr. Evan Kanter, UW school of medicine professor and the current president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, delivered a somber talk describing the mental health situation among Gaza’s population.[5]
Dr. Kanter cited studies that revealed 62 % of Gaza’s inhabitants reported having a family member injured or killed, 67% saw injured or dead strangers and 83% had witnessed shootings. In a study of high school aged children from southern refugee camps in Rafah and Kahn Younis, 69% of the children showed symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress (PTS), 40% showed signs of moderate or severe depression, and a whopping 95% exhibited severe anxiety. Seventy percent showed limited or no ability to cope with their trauma. All of this was before the last Israeli invasion.
Dr. Eyad El-Sarraj, head of the Gaza Community Mental Program, and whom Dr. Kanter described as a “medical hero” working under seemingly impossible conditions, has produced “some of the best research in the world on the impact of war on civilian populations.” In a 2002 interview he said that 54% of children in Gaza had symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress, along with 30% of adults.[6] The hardest hit were young ones who had their homes bulldozed or who lost loved ones like their mothers, he said. Again, these figures were obtained well before conditions dramatically deteriorated.
Gaza is a land of youth. About 45% of the population is 14 years old or younger and about 60% are 19 years and younger, political economist Dr. Sara Roy said. [7] With such a young population facing constant violence, the long-term effects are incalculable.
Particularly horrifying about the situation in Gaza is that there is no post trauma for most in Gaza.
Recent studies by international researchers and the Gaza Community Mental Health Program revealed more worrying figures.[8] Of a representative sample of children in Gaza, more than 95% experienced artillery shelling in their area or sonic booms of low flying jets. Ninety-four percent recalled seeing mutilated corpses on TV while some 93% witnessed the effects of aerial bombardments on the ground. More than 70% of children in Gaza said they lacked water, food and electricity during the most recent attacks, and a similar percentage said they had to flee to safety during the recent attacks.
Additionally, 98.7% of the traumatized children reported that they did not feel safe in their homes. More than 95% of the children felt that they were unable to protect themselves or their family members causing a feeling of utter powerlessness only compounded by a sense of loss over the lives they could have had, safe and boring lives that many take for granted.
A whole generation is being lost to the horrors of large-scale military violence and a brutal occupation. In front of many distraught members in the audience, Kanter described another study that showed that witnessing severe military violence results in more aggression and antisocial behavior among children, along with the “enjoyment of aggression.” There are similar studies among Israeli children who witness terrorist attacks.
Post Traumatic Stress disorder, Dr. Kanter said, is an “engine that perpetuates violent conflict.” It leads to three characteristic symptoms. The first involves reexperiencing the traumatic events in the form of the nightmares, debilitating flashbacks, and terrifying memories that haunt people for years afterwards. Other people may develop avoidance symptoms in which they become isolated and emotionally numb, deadened to the world around them. The third symptom involves hyper arousal, which may lead to excessive anger, insomnia, self-destructive behavior, and a hypervigilant state of mind. Other maladies like poor social functioning, depression, suicidal thoughts, a lack of trust, family violence are all associated with PTS.
More than 70% of children in gaza said they lacked water, food, and electricity during the most recent attacks, and a similar percentage said they had to flee to safety during the recent attacks.
The most recent study however, revealed that in the aftermath of the most recent assault on Gaza an unbelievable 91.4% of children in Gaza displayed symptoms of moderate to very severe PTS. Only about 1% of the children showed no signs of PTS.
Try to imagine an area with this many people—the city you live in for example—where 9 out of 10 children exhibited symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress. What would daily life be like? What would the future hold for your city’s youth?
Particularly horrifying about the situation is that there is no “post” trauma for most in Gaza. Whereas soldiers who endure traumatic experiences in a war zone can return home to relative calm and seek treatment, the people in Gaza continue to held in what one Israeli rights group labeled the “largest prison on Earth”[10]—a methodically “de-developed” island of misery isolated from the rest of the world. The fate of the 1.5 million “unpeople” trapped there is of no concern to the occupying army or its international backers.[11]
This will be the enduring legacy of the Israeli occupation. One of the most distressing prospects for peace are studies of similar war-torn populations like Kosovo and Afghanistan that showed that military violence often leads to widespread feelings of hatred and the simmering urge for revenge. One can easily predict the future consequences of a large number of young people exposed to this level of trauma.
As Dr. Eyad El-Sarraj warned soon after the offensive, Palestinian children in the first intifadah 20 years ago threw stones at Israeli tanks trying to wrest freedom from Israeli military occupation. Some of those children grew up to become suicide bombers in the second intifadah 10 years later. It does not take much to imagine the serious changes that will befall today’s children.[12]
Women in the war zone are have a unique perspective to share, yet their story is an all too familiar narrative: violence that leads to anger, vengeance, and the destruction of the bonds that tie a society together.
Tihani Abed Rabbu, a mother who lost her teenage son, brother, and close friend, spoke of her fears: What worries me is the safety of my family, my sons and my husband. My husband is going through a difficult time, a crazy time. He wants to affiliate with Hamas, he wants to get revenge after what they [Israel, I think] have done to us. How do you expect us to be peaceful after they have killed my son and turned my family into angry people – as they refer to us, “terrorists.” I cannot calm my family down.[13]
Chris Hedges, former New York Times Middle East Bureau Chief, reminds us that, A father or a mother whose child dies because of a lack of vaccines or proper medical care does not forget. A boy whose ill grandmother dies while detained at an Israel checkpoint does not forget. All who endure humiliation, abuse and the murder of family members do not forget. This rage becomes a virus within those who, eventually, stumble out into the daylight.[14]
Despite some positive steps towards regaining some sense of normalcy, mostly from small non-governmental groups and international activists, the crushing siege continues and basic conditions of life continue to deteriorate. For many, hope is fading. Despair is spreading. “The breakdown of an entire society is happening in front of us,” Harvard specialist Sara Roy warned. Many share Roy’s fears that “What looms is no less than the loss of entire generation of Palestinians,” which she fears may have occurred already.[15]
In the face of this onslaught however, lies a stubborn resistance. This resistance takes many forms—the one most often seen in the US is that of the few who see armed conflict as the only path to liberation. “While some Palestinians return Israeli violence with further violence,” journalist Philip Rizk said, “the vast majority does not.” Many bear invisible scars but they nevertheless go on with their daily lives: put their children through school, study and try to do well in exams, seek to serve their home and community, laugh and play, and ultimately try to retain their sense of dignity while living under foreign occupation. As Rizk observed, “the Arabic word for such everyday acts of non-violent protest is sumoud, which means steadfastness, perseverance.” [16]
Aditya Ganapathiraju is a human rights activist living in Kenmore, Washington in the United States. He is a psychology and philosophy student at the University of Washington.
Edwards Said and David Barsamian ,The Pen and the Sword, Common Courage Press, 1994, page 99
’Gaza wears a face of misery,’ Adam Makary, Al Jazeera” April 4, 2009 http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/…
“Young Freud in Gaza” Al Jazeera, June 18, 2009 http://english.aljazeera.net/progra…
“Israel’s ‘Crime Against Humanity,’ Chris Hedges, Truthdig, December 15, 2008 http://www.truthdig.com/report/prin…
“Gaza: What Next? A Teach-In on the Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza” UW Global Health, February 5, 2009 http://depts.washington.edu/deptgh/…
“Clips from Dying to Live, a documentary film by Amineh Ayyad about health and human rights in Palestine. Shot in 2002. http://palestinejournal.blogspot.co…
’Sara Roy – Beyond Occupation” Australian Broadcasting Corp. October 14, 2008, Part 17, 1:03:00 http://fora.tv/2008/10/14/Sara_Roy_…
Gaza Community Mental Health Program http://www.gcmhp.net/ Additional figures from recent studies reveal the following conclusions (from a June 3 press release):
66.6% of the children appeared to have some symptoms of anxiety and psychological fears. 42.0% of the children expect events similar to those they passed through.
36.4% of the children feel disturbance and tension when experiencing events reminding them of the tragic war.
98.5% of children did not feel secure during the war due to their sense of powerlessness to protect themselves and the inability of others to protect them.
61.5% of the parents indicated the emergence of unusual behaviors among their children (such as continuous crying, and restlessness).
40.6% of parents indicated that their children have problems with their peers.
82.1% of the children expressed their conviction that Gaza is an unsafe place.
73.5% of the children had fears of being targeted and killed.
76.6% of children had fears of occurrence of what happened to them during the war.
GCHMP, Thabet, et al., “Trauma, grief, and PTSD in Palestinian children victims of War on Gaza”
“Gaza Prison: Freedom of Movement to and from the Gaza Strip on the Eve of the Disengagement Plan” http://www.btselem.org/English/Publ… “The Gaza Strip-One Big Prison” B’tselem http://www.btselem.org/Download/200…
’Good News,’ Iraq and Beyond,” Noam Chomsky, ZNet, February 16, 2008 http://www.chomsky.info/articl…
“A 14-year-old in Gaza has one question: Why?” Eyad El-Sarraj, January 11, 2009, Boston Globe http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/e… “Cast Lead: As many as 352 children killed” Defense for Children International, Sept 3, 2009 http://www.dci-pal.org/english/disp…
“Women in the war zone: Gaza” Helena Cobban July 7, 2009 http://justworldnews.org/archives/0… “Gaza conflict: Views on Hamas” BBC, July 7, 2009 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_e…
“Israel’s ‘Crime Against Humanity,’ Chris Hedges, Truthdig, December 15, 2008 http://www.truthdig.com/report/prin…
“Destroying Gaza,” Sara Roy, The Electronic Intifada, 9 July 2009 http://electronicintifada.net/v2/ar…
“’Gaza wears a face of misery,’ Adam Makary, Al Jazeera” April 4, 2009 http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/…
Mohammed Ahmed Issa Yassen, 20, lives in the occupied West Bank village of Bilin, where he works in his family’s car garage business as a mechanic. He is also a student at the al-Quds Open University, but since he has joined the Israeli intelligence’s “wanted” list from the village, studying has been difficult. The Electronic Intifada contributor Jody McIntyre interviewed Mohammed about living under the constant threat of arrest:
Jody McIntyre: How many times have the Israeli army been to your house?
Mohammed Ahmed Issa Yassen: During the most recent wave of arrests in the village [which has been over the last four months], the army have been to my house eight times. The first time they came was 3 July; I was not at home, so they started trashing our house and destroying the furniture. My mother, who is 52 years old, was at home at the time, and they told her to bring her son to prison. Each time they came, they were more and more aggressive towards my mother. Nowadays, she can’t sleep at night.
They also went to the house of my older brother, Mazen, and gave him an invitation demanding that he hand me in at Ofer military complex, so that they could arrest me. They didn’t say why they wanted to arrest me.
JM: How have the night raids affected your life?
MY: I can’t live a normal life. I can’t sleep at home during the night, because I fear that the army will come to arrest me, and during the day I must work; my father passed away in January of this year, so I must earn money for the family. We don’t live a luxurious lifestyle, not by any means, but we need to have food on the table.
My young nieces and nephews used to come over to my house to stay with [their] grandmother, but on one occasion the army invaded while they were here, and now they’re too afraid to sleep over again. It’s not just my family though, it’s a problem for the whole village — no one can sleep at night anymore.
JM: What about your studies and relationships with friends?
MY: It was difficult to continue my studies before the night raids, because of the expense of traveling to university and paying the semester fees, but now it is pretty much impossible. The night raids have ruined my education.
Some of my friends are afraid to hang out with me now, because they fear that they might also be arrested. I don’t want to go to stay at my friends’ houses anymore, or to have them over to stay, because I don’t want to drag them into my problems.
JM: Has anyone else from your family been arrested in the past?
MY: At the beginning of the nonviolent resistance in Bilin, towards the start of 2006, they were using a similar tactic as recently, invading the village at night and arresting the participants of the demonstrations. They arrested my oldest brother Bassem, and kept him in jail for four months.
At around the same time, they arrested my younger brother Abdullah. He was just 14 years old at the time. I was 16, and it was the first time I had seen the soldiers at such a close range … the first time I’d had a chance to look them in the eyes. I was terrified.
During the second or third of the most recent raids in my house, they arrested Abdullah, now aged 18, again. He’s been in jail for the last two months, and won’t be released for another four and a half. I miss Abdullah so much … before he was arrested, we would spend the whole day working together in our family’s garage, and then playing around afterwards. I would give him some money from the business’ takings, without telling our mother … sometimes we didn’t have enough money to go around, so I would give him some from my own pocket, just to make him feel like he was living a normal childhood. Since our father died, I’ve felt like a father to Abdullah.
JM: Why do you think the Israeli army want to arrest you?
MY: I don’t know why they have made me into this big criminal … I have to work all day to make sure my family has bread, so I don’t even have time to go to the demonstrations! Young boys from the village, under intense interrogation, supposedly “confessed” that I had thrown stones in the past — this isn’t true, but even if I had, what difference does this make to the fourth largest army in the world? After all, they are the ones stealing our land!
It seems that every couple of years, the army in Bilin, perhaps under different leaderships, try a new tactic to stop our nonviolent demonstrations. Sometimes they arrest people from the village, like they are doing now, sometimes they impose curfews, and sometimes they kill people … like my friend Bassem Abu Rahme.
They think they can stop the demonstrations in Bilin, but they can’t, so they punish us instead.
JM: What is your message to the Israeli government who want to put you in jail?
MY: Leave me alone so that I can go back to my studies, to play football with my friends, and to continue with my normal life. And release my brother Abdullah so I can see him again.
If Israelis want to meet me then we can go to the playground and have a game of football, not in a military prison!
JM: Do you think there will ever be a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
MY:I just want to see a peaceful solution in my house and in my village. For now, it is difficult for me to think about the bigger picture.
Maysaa Al-Kurd has lived all her life in the home her family moved into in 1956. The pomegranate tree standing in the garden was planted by her father when she was still an infant nearly half a century ago. But that hardly reassured her yesterday when she heard the Jewish settlers break into the next-door extension building her brother Nabil built to house his family in 2001.
“I heard the door opened by force,” she said. “And then I heard one of them say: ‘This furniture belongs to whom?'” Later she saw “with my own eyes” a settler breaking a television set. Outside, a refrigerator, cushions and household furniture, apparently removed by the intruders, stood for several hours in the pouring rain. Inside, broken glass could be seen above a stove.
What Ms Kurd, of the inner-city East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah, was hearing at about 10.30am yesterday was the latest in an accelerating series of highly charged and organised moves by settlers into the city’s Arab sector. Armed with a court order saying they own the property, the settlers – about 40, according to Ms Kurd – decided to break in just four days after Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, dismayed Palestinian and other Arab leaders by praising the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “unprecedented” promise of “a restraint” in illegal settlement activity.
Mrs Clinton sought on Monday to “clarify” her remarks by acknowledging that Mr Netanyahu’s proposals fell well short of the settlement freeze the US had earlier called for. And, while Mr Netanyahu has offered temporarily to halt authorisations of new settlement building in the West Bank, he has resolutely set his face against any slowdown in East Jerusalem. The UN says that 194 people were forcibly displaced from their homes in East Jerusalem by evictions and demolitions between January and July of this year. Israel insists it annexed the Arab sector of Jerusalem after the Six-Day War in 1967, but this is rejected by most of the international community who endorse Palestinian aspirations for it to be the capital of a future state. In Amman, the British Foreign Secretary David Miliband expressed “concern” over events at the Kurd house and added: “The current situation is obviously particularly tense in respect of Jerusalem.”
Since a 2001 court order the rooms invaded by the settlers have been closed and used only to store furniture. But for Ms Kurd, whose property is one of at least 24 that settlers are hoping to acquire in this sensitive neighbourhood, their sudden arrival only intensified her fear of losing her home. “We are all worried for the future,” she said, “not just in Sheikh Jarrah but in all East Jerusalem.”
Only last week about a hundred Israeli security personnel arrived to remove a nearby protest tent that the Palestinian Ghawi family had been sleeping in since being evicted in August. That move came 24 hours after bulldozers levelled the homes of six families across East Jerusalem on the grounds they did not have the proper permit. Human rights activists say it is exponentially harder for Palestinians than Israelis to obtain permits.
Another elderly member of Ms Kurd’s extended family, Mohammed al- Kurd, died after being evicted last August from his home and moving into a similar tent to the Ghawi family’s. Like other of his relatives, he had refused to pay rent to the post-1967 Jewish owners, partly, some diplomats say, because they still dispute the historic right of ownership.
Maysaa al-Khurd said that her “life and blood” was in the house. Asked about the settlers’ argument that they have a right to the land because Yemenite Jews lived there before 1948, she added that her own family were 1948 refugees from what was now Israel. “My family are all from Haifa. Can I go there and say I own the house and I have the key? Can I tell the people there that is my house? They will kill me.”
Police stood guard outside the Sheikh Jarrah house while settlers occupied the adjacent building but eventually left on police advice. However two security guards employed by them were still there at the end of the day.
Although the house and its land was allotted to the Palestinian family in 1956 by the UN Relief and Works Agency and Jordan – then in control of the West Bank and East Jerusalem – the Israeli authorities expropriated numbers of properties in the area as state land after 1967. In some cases – apparently including this one – the land was later transferred or sold to companies or organisations representing settlers. None of the departing settlers would speak to reporters, but Adnan Husseini, the Palestinian Authority governor of Jerusalem, said: “The changing position of the American administration led to this.”
Nabil al-Kurd, a father of four children, was summoned from work by his family when the settlers arrived. He was later told by police the settlers would be ordered to stay away pending 10 days in which Mr Kurd could lodge an appeal.
