On Wednesday 4 November 2009, a vibrant demonstration was held in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of occupied East Jerusalem. The demonstration was organised as a protest against Jewish settlers taking over a Palestinian house in Sheikh Jarrah, belonging to the Al Kurd family, on the previous day. It was also a protest against the ongoing home confiscations, home demolitions, and evictions of Palestinian families in East Jerusalem.
The demonstration gathered about 150 demonstrators and was covered by a number of press reporters. In addition to Sheikh Jarrah families, participant organizations included Israeli activists such as Ta’ayush and Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, and international activists such as the International Solidarity Movement, Michigan Peace Team, and Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel.
Heavily armed Israeli police officers observed the demonstration but did not intervene to stop it, unlike their action on 26 October when a gathering of about 50 people in the same location triggered the police to violently disperse the crowd and arrest 4 persons.
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.
Wednesday, 4 November 2009 at 7pm: A protest vigil will be held outside the al-Kurd home in Sheikh Jarrah.
Following a settler takeover of a Palestinian home in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, the al-Kurd family and international and Israeli solidarity groups will hold a vigil.
Israeli settlers take over Palestinian home
Tuesday morning at around 9.30am, a group of settlers took over a portion of the al-Kurd family home. The 40 settlers, accompanied by private armed security and Israeli police forces, entered a section of the home, threw out the family’s belongings and locked themselves in.
The take-over came after an appeal submitted by the family’s lawyer was rejected by the District Court this morning. In their appeal, the Palestinian family was challenging an earlier court decision that deemed a section of the house illegal and ordered that the keys be given to settlers. The settlers proceeded to enter the house, while the court did not grant them the right to enter the property.
The al-Kurd home was built in 1956. An addition to the house was built 10 years ago, but the family was not allowed to inhabit the section because the municipality refused to grant them a building permit.
The al-Kurds have become the fourth Sheikh Jarrah family whose house (or part of it) has been occupied by settlers in the last year. So far, 60 people have been left homeless. In total, 28 families living in the Karm Al-Ja’ouni neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah, located directly north of the Old City, face imminent eviction from their homes.
In a strategic plan, settlers have been utilizing discriminatory laws to expand their presence in Occupied East Jerusalem. Palestinians, who face difficulties in acquiring building permits from the municipality, are often left with no legal recourse for extending their homes to accompany their growing families. The Israeli authorities exercise their abilities to demolish and evict Palestinian residents, while ignoring building violations from the Israeli population in East Jerusalem. Visibly unequal practices make it possible for settlers to move into a home where it was declared illegal for Palestinian residents to inhabit.
When talking about Palestine and Palestinian’s rights it is difficult to decide where to start. So I will just tell you day about my day of today.
9:39am: I am drinking my second cup of tea, trying to do my arabic homework, (last minute as usual) when I got a text message “DWG alert : demolition ongoing of a structure in Abu Dur in East Jerusalem. For further info call xxx”. I ring the number, try to get info about this address and figure out if it is still time to get there or if everything is already over.
I jump into a taxi, and start grumbling against Jerusalem’s traffic. When we reach Abu Dur, a truck blocks the street. I get out the taxi, decided to find the place walking. But I realize I am in a very Jewish and “bourgeois” neighbourhood. Obviously nobody is going to demolish anything here. Did I misunderstood the indication? Did the taxi driver make a bad joke? I get down the hill looking for buldozers. Finally the neighbourhood’s look changes. Smaller houses, pourer, narrow streets. Much more arabic looking. And suddenly 4 soldiers heavily equipped. They stare at me. I don’t look very local. “Where are you going?” “I’m visiting” “Visiting whom? “nobody, just looking for a nice place to take photos” “Passport?”
10:25am: After checking my passport they let me go through. I hate them but at least I know I am on the right way now. And a few hundreds meters further I reach the crime scene. The house, I mean the rubble.
A woman crying, another shouting her anger. Buldozers and police left a few minutes ago. Men from the family and neighbours are already active trying to clean the place. They received an order from the municipal representative to clear out all the rubble that used to be their home within a week, otherwise they would receive a fine.
The few belongings the family managed to save are piled on the street. A children bike, books, a cupboard, toys, kitchen items. That’s it. 2 houses, 16 persons just lost their all house, home, history, dignity, hope.
The father of the family fainted twice during the demolition, and was hospitalized.
Atmosphere is oppressive. A few people taking pictures, a few journalists. I meet people from Icahd, the ngo I volunteer with. Closed faces. What can we do or say? I don’t know and feel ashamed and sad.
11am: Time to go. I’m already late for my arabic class though I promised myself I would not miss any.
During an hour and half I try to focus on grammar. I don’t feel comfortable to speak about much with other students. This is life in Israel. Deal with ignorance at the best, and hate at the worst in your daily life.But I am the lucky one, I can go from one side to the other.
13h50: I am at Icahd’ office in West Jerusalem. I am determined to focus on the advocacy document I am supposed to work on.
14h: phone call: new house demolition in Beit Hanina. We try to get more information before jumping into a taxi again, an arab one preferably cause others usually refuse to go to this part of Jerusalem.
14h30 : still in the taxi, tens of phone calls to try to locate the house.
15h : we found it. Again to late. Buldozers left half an hour ago. 22 persons homeless. A family with 10 children, plus grand-children. This house was built seven years ago. They have already payed 42000 shekels ( more than 8000 euros) as fines to ‘regularize’ their situation. Yesterday, the court ruled it was illegal. This morning the family received demolition order. this afternoon the buldozers.
Some families live years under demolition order. Not them. You never know when and where they are going to demolish one of the thousands of houses declared illegal. And one day, you see the buldozers coming, you have ten minutes to pack and then it’s over. A woman from the family fainted when she saw the buldozers. The army called an ambulance. The ambulance treated her. Then the army gave the family the bill for the ambulance… They will then receive the bill for the demolition cost. Arrogance, cynism have no limit here.
A few months ago, the municipality told the family that if they would destroy by themselves the small annex they have, they would not touch the main house. The owner did it. He took off the roof and walls of the adjacent small building. Now he has absolutely nothing.
Is it necessary to add that it is raining and cold winter has just started.
I am there with an israeli activist from Icahd. Communication is therefore in hebrew. I can just take a few pictures. The only one smiling here is the little girl, maybe 4 years old. She asks me “Leish?” showing the destroyed house. This, I understand : “Why?”. I cannot answer anything, in whatever language.
After a few months of pause, the municipality of Jerusalem has clearly reinstated its illegal and racist policy of house demolitions in East Jerusalem. 11 within the last 3 weeks. These houses are ruled illegal by a municipality which does not grant any construction permits to Arabs but who promotes illegal settlements in occupied East Jerusalem.
My day is not over but it’s enough for now, Masalama.
On Monday 2 November 2009 between 11 and 12am, a quiet demonstration was held outside the USA consulate in East Jerusalem, close to the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood. Coinciding with USA foreign secretary Hillary Clinton’s visit to Israel, the demonstration asked for the USA to apply more pressure on Israel and stop the home confiscations and evictions of Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah.
The demonstration gathered about 30-40 demonstrators and was covered by a number of press reporters. In addition to Sheikh Jarrah families, participant organizations included Ta’ayush, Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, International Solidarity Movement, Michigan Peace Team, and Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel. A police vehicle with heavily armed police officers arrived after five minutes and maintained a peripheral position for the remainder of the demonstration.
On Monday 2 November 2009 between 11 and 12am, a quiet demonstration was held outside the USA consulate in East Jerusalem, close to the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood. Coinciding with USA foreign secretary Hillary Clinton’s visit to Israel, the demonstration asked for the USA to apply more pressure on Israel and stop the home confiscations and evictions of Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah.