Tag: Ethnic Cleansing

EU urges Israel to suspend East Jerusalem evictions

EU business

23 March 2009

The European Union on Monday called on Israel to suspend eviction notices sent to Palestinian families in East Jerusalem, saying they further threaten the chances of peace.

“The EU is deeply concerned by the issuing of eviction notices to the al-Rawi and Hanoun families in East Jerusalem,” the EU’s Czech presidency said in a statement on behalf of the 27 member states.

“These eviction notices follow other recent orders which adversely affect Palestinians living in East Jerusalem and, combined with the increase in settlement activity in East Jerusalem, further threaten the chances of peace,” the statement added.

Last week the Palestinian Authority accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing” after it delivered dozens of eviction orders to residents of annexed, mostly Arab east Jerusalem.

Last month Palestinian officials and residents told AFP that Israel had ordered hundreds of Palestinians to leave their homes in annexed east Jerusalem, warning their houses are illegal.

Israel, which considers the whole of Jerusalem its “eternal, undivided” capital, rarely grants building permits to Arab residents of east Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want to make the capital of their promised state.

The eviction orders have also triggered United Nations concerns.

The EU presidency said it had “raised our concerns with the Israeli government and call on Israel to suspend these eviction notices immediately”.

Israeli forces hand out another eviction order; claim Qalqiliya-area town as Jewish property

16th March 2009 | Ma’an News Agency

Qalqiliya – Ma’an – The home of 80-year-old Hajj Abdul Mu’ti Salah in Kafr Jammal is on Jewish land, the elderly West Banker was told Sunday, and he must evacuate the property immediately.

Since the beginning of March Israeli forces were seen in the 2,000-year-old village northwest of Qalqiliya, filming, plotting maps, and making detailed notes.

On Sunday, Israeli forces handed a warrant to Salah telling him to evacuate his home claiming it is a Jewish property. The home is known as the “Abu Khilaf home,” Salah grew up in the home, inherited it from his father, and raised his own children there.

“We never heard from our ancestors anything about what the Israeli authorities are claiming now,” local resident Hazim Abd As-Salam said. “The village has been an Arab-Palestinian village since the beginnings of history. The area they claim to be Jewish property is an archeological site dating back to more than two thousand years, It’s full of Roman and Byzantine artifacts, and there is no single clue to support what they claim.”

The house, added Abd As-Salam, “is next to an ancient mosque,” that his parents’ parents’ grandparents prayed in, “The whole village belongs to the Arab and Islamic civilization,” he added.

The eviction and confiscation order came the same day Israeli forces re-occupied the Ar-Rajabi home in Hebron. The home had been claimed using illegal sale documents and occupied by ultra-orthodox Israeli settlers. The settlers were ordered out of the home by the Israeli high court, and when the reused to leave they were forcibly evicted on 4 December. During the incident settlers from the nearby Kiriyat Arba settlement rioted and shot a Palestinian bystander at point blank range.

Israeli soldiers, not settlers this time, occupied the home and claimed as a military base.

Also on 15 March the eviction orders on two homes in Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem, took effect. A mass eviction and demolition order also stands on 88 Palestinian homes in Silwan, another neighborhood in East Jerusalem.

In early February an Israeli military tribunal issued a decision rejecting eight separate petitions, each representing dozens of Palestinians, objecting to a 2004 declaration by the Israeli Civil Administration to designate some 1,700 dunums (1.7 square kilometers) of land north of the West Bank settlemtn Efrat as “state land.”

In Kafr Jammal, Salah is so sick that he can’t speak and his wife feels powerless to stop the eviction and confiscation of her home.

In an effort to stymie the confiscation, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) called the residents of the village through the loudspeakers of the ancient mosque near the Salah home, to do their best to prevent the Israeli plans to displace them from their homes.

The PFLP also released a statement appealing to all Palestinian institutions at official and popular levels to counter the Israeli plans.

Two Palestinian families due to be evicted by Israeli authorities in Sheikh Jarrah, Occupied East Jerusalem

15th March 2009, Sheikh Jarrah, Occupied East Jerusalem: Two Palestinian families, consisting of 51 people, are to be evicted from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah, occupied East Jerusalem

At 12am on Sunday, 15th March, eviction orders, issued by an Israeli court, will begin for two housing units in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem. These housing units belong to the Al-Ghawe and Hanun families.

These orders are valid until the 22nd of March.

The Al-Ghawe famiy consist of 34 residents while the Hanun family household includes 17 people.

In 2002, both the Al-Ghawe and Hanun families were evicted from their homes by Israeli police, after Israeli settlers used falsified documents to claim ownership of these houses.

Family members lived in tents for four months before returning to their homes. The families were able to present their documents
proving their legal ownership before the courts on the 19th of February, but the eviction orders still remain in effect.

The Israelis don’t want me on this land. The ownership documents from the settlers are false, but there is no fairness in the Israeli courts for Palestinians. I was born here in my house, where I have lived for all of the 46 years of my life. Where do they want me to go? I haven’t any other place to live -Nasser Ghawe, Sheikh Jarrah resident

This is an ethnic cleaning that will eventually spread to all of Jerusalem. We are asking all people everywhere to unify against what is going on here and stand firm in the face of evictions. These families legally own their homes, and they should be allowed to stay -Rima Essa, Coalition for Jerusalem

International Human Rights Workers will be staying with the families in solidarity with the protest against these evictions.

The Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood became symbolic in it’s struggle against the ethnic cleansing of occupied East Jerusalem in the run-up to the violent eviction of the al-Kurd family on the 9th November. A protest camp was established initially to show support for the evicted family and the 500 other Palestinians who are under threat of eviction. Israeli forces have demolished the camp four times.

The house had become emblematic of the plight of Palestinian residents of Occupied East Jerusalem. The al-Kurd family were previously made refugees from Jaffa and West Jerusalem. They were then made refugees for the second time as they were evicted from their home of 52 years.

In July the US State Department brought forward an official complaint to the Israeli government over the eviction of the al-Kurd family, openly questioning the legality of terms on which the Israeli Jewish settler group claimed to have purchased the land.

In the near-by Bustan area of Silwan, 88 houses have been served with demolition orders, threatening the homes of 1,500 Palestinians.

According to The Guardian, a confidential EU report accuses the Israeli government of using settlement expansion, house demolitions, discriminatory housing policies and the West Bank barrier as a way of “actively pursuing the illegal annexation” of East Jerusalem.