Tag: Eviction order

Siam family from Sheikh Jarrah, struggling against eviction order and not giving up

25th July 2013 |International Solidarity Movement, Ramallah team | East Jerusalem, Occupied Palestine

Another family from Sheikh Jarrah received an eviction order by the Israeli Magistrate’s court. The family has appealed the court’s decision and is awaiting the next court hearing.

The latest family to be given an eviction order in the East Jerusalem neighborhood Sheikh Jarrah is the Siam family. After a six year legal battle, the court has ruled the house to be ;.labsentee property and the eviction has been ratified by the Magistrate’s court. The court has ruled that the family could not prove ownership of the house and therefore should leave the property by the end of July. Nathira Siam has appealed the case to the second court with help from the community. She does not know when the second court hearing will take place, which leaves the family in a situation of insecurity.

The Siam family has been renting the house from a woman called Sabriye Taha since the early 1960’s until she passed away. The family had a rental contract with Sabriye Taha and has been paying her regularly. When Sabryie died, the Israeli government changed the status of the house to absentee property. The Custodian of Absentee Property ordered the family to pay an extra amount of money each month if they wanted to keep the house. This amount of money was constantly raised. They presented this to Nathira Siam in a contract in Hebrew, which she was not able to understand. Nathira explains that they forced her to sign the paper by telling her that she would otherwise lose her house.

The Israeli government was able to do so according to the law of Absentee Property from 1950. This law applies to property and property rights, belonging to anyone who was not present at his home in Israeli controlled areas during the period between November 1947 and 19th May 1948. The Israeli authority was not obligated to inform the concerned party, meaning families could lose their homes without even being aware of it. Additionally the families would not get any compensation for the loss of their homes. When the law was passed, East Jerusalem was under Jordanian control and was therefore not included in this. However, after the illegal annexation of East Jerusalem into the state of Israel, the homes of the Palestinians fall under the law of Absentee Property. In the 1970’s, due to international condemnation of the practice of this law, the residents of East Jerusalem were temporarily exempt from it. Nevertheless, once the original owner dies the property again falls into the category of Absentee Property. This is the case of the Siam family after the death of Sabriye Taha.

Nathira Siam (Photo by ISM) — Nathira Siam in her house (Photo by ISM)

When asked where the family would go if evicted after the next court hearing, Nathira Siam says that she has nowhere to go, she has only God. However, she stays strong and insists that she did not even consider the possibility of having to leave her home through the last 50 years.

The case of the Siam family does not stand alone. Most of the families on the street have received eviction orders and are facing the same process as the Siam family. Since 2008, in the area of Sheik Jarrah, three families have been evicted and their homes taken over by settlers. In addition, several buildings in the neighbourhood have been taken over by settlers, including the front building of al Kurd’s family home.

This is part of the Israeli policy of ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem and greater Palestine. The ultimate aim of the Zionist organizations that are behind the evictions of Palestinian families is to convert Sheikh Jarrah into a new Jewish settlement and to create a Jewish continuum that will effectively cut off the Old City from the northern Palestinian neighborhoods.

Residents of Beit Hanina stand against eviction

14th June 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, RamallahTeam | Beit Hanina, Occupied Palestine

On Monday, June 10, a group of fifty-three Palestinians living in the Beit Hanina neighborhood of East Jerusalem received eviction orders from the Israeli authorities. These families have been living in Beit Hanina for over 40 years and for nearly the past 20 years have been fighting off repeated attempts by Israeli officials and soldiers trying to force them off their land. The eviction order, now effective, could be enforced at any time.

Ever since the Apartheid Wall was built around East Jerusalem, these people have been separated from family members, who live just on the other side of the Wall. To complicate matters even further, they have West Bank identification cards, although the Wall–which, in Beit Hanina, stretches outside the legal borders of East Jerusalem–separates them from the rest of the West Bank. Travel to Jerusalem, therefore, is illegal for them. And without a permit, travel to the West Bank means that they may not be allowed to come back through one of the many checkpoints separating the West Bank from East Jerusalem.

The residents of Beit Hanina will continue to resist the illegal occupation of their lands and eviction of their families to build illegal settlements.

38 Military Orders on homes in Tel Rumeida, Hebron

4 December 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

There are 38 military orders issued on homes in Tel Rumeida and Hebron. On Sunday 3rd December the District Coordination Office (D.C.O.) and the lawyers representing the families who have military orders put on their homes were supposed to be visiting the sites that the orders refer to. The purpose of the tour of these sites was to ascertain exactly what the meaning of these military orders are. The tour of the sites has been delayed. This delay leaves the families concerned still wondering what will happen to their homes and lands.

The D.C.O. and the lawyers from the Hebron Rehabilitation Center (H.R.C.) representing the families will take the tour around the sites within the next twenty days. After the tour is taken the families will again have five days in which to make their legal objections to the military orders.

This delay will add to the anxiety suffered by the families involved. Many of these families already have military watchtowers on the roofs of their houses and have faced having military orders put on them before. The scale of the 38 military orders goes beyond simple harassment. The Israeli Occupation forces obviously have some kind of large plan for the area, to increase the already intolerable oppression on the residents of Tel Rumeida. All the families however have organized a collective response to this threat. The Palestinian community of Tel Rumeida will face this in solidarity with each other.

By Team Khalil

Israeli occupation forces issue five new military orders in Hebron

4th November 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

On Friday 2nd November the Israeli military issued five military orders on five families in and around Hebron. Families in Tel Rumeida are under threat of having their movement severely restricted. At the time of writing Sunday 4th November the objectives of the military orders is unclear.

A lawyer from the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee (H.R.C.) is representing all five of the families who have received these orders. The families have been given five days to lodge their objections to the documents. A collective objection will be made by the lawyer representing the families but the complaint cannot be made until the military orders are completely understood. The H.R.C. met with the District Coordination Office (D.C.O.) on Sunday 4th November in an effort to clarify what the military orders pertained to. After the meeting the H.R.C. said that the orders were about the restriction of movement of the families concerned. The H.R.C. also said that some of the content of the orders was still unclear. It is a tactic of the Israeli occupation forces to make these orders as difficult to understand as possible. This makes legal challenges to the orders more difficult, it is also done to obfuscate the true intentions of the Israeli military. The orders are deliberately kept unclear so the Israeli army can then do whatever they want.

Imad Abu Shamsia and his family, who live in Tel Rumeida, Hebron, received a copy of the military orders issued to them in Arabic and Hebrew. The orders contained a map detailing their house and the surrounding area. It was assumed at first that the orders related to the roof of the house, the Abu Shamsia house has had a military watchtower on the roof for twelve years. It was thought possible that the Israeli military may be wanting to place surveillance cameras on the home.

On Sunday when being informed of what the H.R.C. had said and had been doing the Abu Shamsia family said that their movement would be restricted in the whole of the Israeli controlled H2 area of Hebron. This area covers the Ibrahimi Mosque, the souk, the old city and also the Abu Shamsia home in Tel Rumeida. At least one other of the military orders affects a family in this area.

The effect of denying the movement of the Abu Shamsia family in the whole of this area would be catastrophic on their daily lives. The route they take to school or to go shopping, their access to the whole of the rest of the city would be restricted. The uncertainty about what exactly these military orders mean, the uncertainty about their future and the future of all the other recipients, must have a devastating affect on the welfare and health of the family.

It would appear the Israeli occupation forces are planning to worsen the precarious existence of the Palestinian population of Tel Rumeida: how exactly is impossible to know at this point in time. There was one chilling phrase from the document issued by the Israeli army that was easily understood, “to put hands on this area.”

Team Khalil.