Tag: Eviction - Page 22 - International Solidarity Movement

Israelis accused of settlement by stealth

Dominic Waghorn | Sky News

24 May 2009

The Israeli Government is being accused of a plot to transform East Jerusalem with Jewish settlements and drive out Palestinians by stealth.

The Hannoun family protest against the loss of their home: Photos by Sameer Bazbaz

Ir Amim, a Jerusalem based NGO specialising in Israeli Palestinian issues, claims Israeli authorities in collusion with radical Jewish settlers are cementing their hold on occupied East Jerusalem..

“The policy of the government of Israel is to establish the supremacy if not the hegemony of an exclusionary Jewish narrative in Jerusalem,” Ir Amim’s Daniel Seidemann told Sky News.

The British government also told us it is concerned by actions in East Jerusalem that threaten to “not only undermine the peace process but undermine the trust that will be needed to renew that process towards a two state solution”.

These are two examples where Israel is alleged to be altering facts on the ground and changing the status of occupied East Jerusalem against international law.

The Hannouns' home has been in their family for over 50 years

The plight of the Hannoun family

Maher Hannoun’s home in Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem has been in his family for more than 50 years. Last week an Israeli court ordered his family to leave, to make way for Jewish settlers.

The Jewish settlement company Nahalat Shimon claims the land was bought by Jews more than a century ago and says the Hannouns have not paid rent.

The Hannouns say they were given the property by the Jordanian Government in the 1940s and the settler’s claims are based on forged papers.

“Jerusalem was given to the Jewish people by God three thousand years ago”, a spokesman for the settlers told Sky News. He confirmed plans to evict more than twenty Palestinian families and move in 300 Jewish families instead.

Maher says he has been offered a lot of money to leave but has no intention of giving in to the settlers.

“For us it’s not about money,” he said. “Nobody can sell his identity, his dreams his memory. I will fight to remain where I was born, where my kids were born.”

The European Union and US Government have both protested to the Israeli Foreign Ministry about the planned evictions. The Israeli Government says it is a matter for the courts, despite the political implications of the case.

Signe Breivik gazes at the remains of the hotel she once ran

The Cliff Hotel

Ali Ayad and his wife Signe Breivik, who is Norwegian, met in his family’s hotel in Abu Dis and married there. He took over running the Cliff Hotel and they lived there with their family, until the Israelis seized it.

In 2003 when they moved out to renovate the place, the Israeli military moved in and refused to let the couple return. The Israelis have built the infamous security barrier right through the property.

They are using an absentee property law to take possession, even though Israel’s attorney general has said the law should not be applied in Jerusalem.

Making matters worse are Israeli plans to build a major settlement in and around the hotel. Some jewish families have already moved in nearby.

Ali is barred from Jerusalem because he has only West Bank ID papers and has been branded a security risk. Meeting the affable dispossess Palestinian it is hard to imagine someone less threatening.

He is not even allowed to attend court hearings determining the fate of his property, but remains calm and unbowed in his resolve to fight the Israelis taking his land.

“This is not an issue that I have a stubborn head. This is simple reason. It’s my own property. I did not sell it. My family did not sell it. We have no intention to give it up,” he said.

Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Miliband has intervened several times in the case of the Cliff Hotel but Israeli authorities appear to have no intention of handing it back.

Mayor’s aide: new deal for Jerusalem Palestinians

Karen Laub | Associated Press

21 May 2009

The Israeli official put in charge of Jerusalem’s Arabs said he believes treating them more fairly will strengthen Israeli claims to all the disputed city, and says he’s seeking ways to legalize thousands of unlicensed Arab homes vulnerable to demolition.

With Israeli control comes responsibility for all Jerusalem residents, including a quarter million Palestinians who suffered decades of neglect, said the official, 32-year-old Yakir Segev, in an interview this week.

The former army commando was appointed six months ago by Mayor Nir Barkat to oversee east Jerusalem, the area captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war and claimed by Palestinians as a future capital. The anniversary of the capture is marked Thursday, according to the Hebrew calendar, with parades and speeches.

The mayor’s critics say they’re getting empty promises. Demolitions of Arab homes have picked up under Barkat, with more than 1,000 orders issued this year, they note, while city funds are still mostly spent in Jewish areas.

Both Segev and his boss staunchly oppose a future partition of the city, seen as key to an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal promoted by President Barack Obama. But Segev says he does want to narrow the gap between well-developed Jewish areas and Arab neighborhoods marked by an acute housing shortage, crowded schools and potholed streets.

“There are lots of obligations,” he said in his office near the walled Old City, site of major shrines sacred to Jews, Muslims and Christians. “You cannot take shortcuts.”

Human rights groups insist they’ve seen no change and dismiss Barkat’s promise to allow construction of 13,500 homes for Arabs over the next two decades as insufficient.

“All the policies we are facing … show that they want to limit the number of Palestinians,” said Ahmed Rweidi, an adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Israel has systematically tightened its hold on east Jerusalem since capturing it June 7, 1967. Immediately after the war, Israel drew new Jerusalem boundaries that reached deep into the West Bank, then annexed the enlarged area to its capital — a step never recognized internationally.

Today, some 180,000 Israelis live in Jewish neighborhoods built in east Jerusalem. Jewish settlement groups, often backed by the government, have established bridge heads deep inside Arab areas, particularly in and near the Old City.

Arabs have little say in city politics because they largely boycott municipal elections, fearing votes could be interpreted as acceptance of Israeli rule.

Israel’s previous prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said he was ready to give up most Arab neighborhoods, though not the Old City and its environs. But his successor, hard-liner Benjamin Netanyahu, refuses to consider concessions.

Barkat ran a law-and-order campaign, including a pledge to end rampant unlicensed construction of nearly 20,000 homes in what he called the “Wild East.”

Palestinians argue the unlicensed construction is necessary because Israel uses restrictions on building permits to limit Arab growth and bolster a Jewish majority, which has fallen nonetheless to 66 percent.

But Barkat dismissed U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton as ill-informed after she called demolitions of Arab homes “unhelpful” to peace efforts. Since he took office, there’s also been uproar over plans to expand an archaeological park near the Old City, which would evict hundreds of Palestinians from unlicensed homes in the Silwan neighborhood.

Segev said a Jewish majority is important for Israel’s claims to the city, but should be achieved by attracting more Jews not limiting Palestinians. And the housing crisis in east Jerusalem has become untenable, he said. In reviewing licensing practices, “our goal is that the majority of the residents will receive a solution,” he said.

Unlicensed homes in residential areas would likely win retroactive approval, while those built on public land or areas earmarked for roads and schools would be demolished, he said. Demolitions will continue despite a call by the U.N.’s top Mideast envoy to suspend them, he said.

Danny Seidemann, who heads Ir Amim, a group that advocates a fair solution for Jerusalem, said he would applaud a policy change, but noted Barkat’s administration has so far rejected proposals, on a smaller scale, to legalize homes en masse.

Segev had never visited Arab areas of the city until Barkat appointed him, he said. Many Israelis are fearful to make the trip, belying Israel’s claims the city is united. But in the past six months, he’s often jogged in Silwan, where nearly 100 homes face demolition.

Segev, who lost his left arm in a childhood accident and overcame huge odds to get into the Egoz commando unit, displays the same can-do attitude now.

“I don’t think Silwan will be Rehavia,” he said, referring to a Jewish upscale neighborhood. “But I think the differences could be a lot less pronounced, and I would like to see to it that the (Arab) population feels that we are serious.”

Associated Press writer Joseph Marks contributed to this report.

Israel has secret plan to thwart division of Jerusalem

Akiva Eldar | Ha’aretz

10 May 2009

The government and settler organizations are working to surround the Old City of Jerusalem with nine national parks, pathways and sites, drastically altering the status quo in the city. The secret plan was assigned to the Jerusalem Development Authority (JDA).

In a report presented to former prime minister Ehud Olmert on September 11 last year, the JDA described the purpose of the project as “to create a sequence of parks surrounding the Old City,” all in the aspiration “to strengthen Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel.”

The program, sponsored by the Prime Minister’s Office and the mayor of Jerusalem, is secret and did not engage in any form of public discussion.

According to an analysis by Ir Amim, a non-profit organization dedicated to Jerusalem issues that impact on Israeli and Palestinians which exposed this detailed, confidential government plan, the motivation is to create Israeli hegemony over the area around the Old City, “inspired by extreme right-wing ideology.”

“This program integrates with statutory program 11555, approved by the Jerusalem municipality in November 2007, designed to accelerate development [to six housing units per dunam, or some 24 units per acre] in one of the most important archaeological sites in Israel. The array of escalators, cable cars and tunnels included in the plan portend blatant signs of a biblical playground populated by settler organizations,” which the organization says will be carried out by ousting Palestinian residents.

Ir Amim charges that by exposing the existence of the program the public is granted, “for the first time, a comprehensive view of how the government and settlers, working as one body, are creating a “biblical” territorial reign which connects Armon Hanatziv and Silwan in the south, Ras al-Amud and the Mount of Olives in the east, and Sheikh Jarra in the north, by connecting all of the land east of E-1.”

In a letter sent in the fall of 2006 by David Barry, founder and director of the Elad organization, to state officials and bodies involved in the project such as the Israel Nature and National Parks Authority and the Israel Antiquities Authority, he explains that he cannot detail the project because “we still cannot talk about them,” but hopes that the results will be evident in the near future.

In the letter Barry also writes that “… the widespread tourist activity, at whose center is the creation of the “Ancient Jerusalem” campus connecting the three sites – the City of David, Mount of Olives and Armon Hanatziv – in each of the three sites we are holding tourist activity on a daily basis.”

The map of Elad’s “Ancient Jerusalem” is, as Ir Amim explains, very similar to the map of the current historic basin project of the Old City.

Attorney Danny Seidemann of Ir Amim says that if the historic basin surrounding the Old City is transformed in the spirit of extreme rightist organizations, “there is a dangerous interface between the program and settler projects whose goal is the prevention of a future political solution in the heart of the conflict.”

Sheikh Jarrah residents charged with refusing to leave their homes

5 May 2009

The court cases of Maher Hannoun and Afed El Fatah Gawi, charged with contempt of court for refusing to leave their homes, were yesterday postponed until the 17th May. Hannoun, 51, and El Fatah, 87, are residents of the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem where a spate of houses are threatened with eviction in Israel’s latest attempted purge of the Palestinian people.

Support for the families of Sheikh Jarrah has been rife amongst international and Israeli activists. They joined friends and family of Hannoun and Gawi outside the court yesterday in a show of solidarity, waving banners and cheering as the accused walked out of court with their freedom intact, albeit temporarily. Inside the courtroom were representatives from the US and French consulate, who sympathise with the families cause and along with the Czech consulate, are pressuring Israel to stop these evictions.

Hannoun has already served three months in prison for the same offence in 2008, and the latest trial comes as a result of the eviction order given to his family on the 15th of March this year. Jewish settlers have been trying to claim the land of Sheikh Jarrah since the early 1970’s and following the eviction of the Al Kurds’ last year, the Hanouns’ and Gawis’ look set to be the latest victims of Israel’s wider policy of ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem.

A new eviction order was given to the families just prior to leaving for the court, increasing the likelihood of imminent eviction. They remain defiant though, and have been joined by international activists in staying up through the night in expectation of the police’s arrival. The stress placed on these families’ is huge, with all the furniture removed the houses and the children distraught at the prospect of losing their home.

The families, together with international and Israeli activists, are calling for people to continue to visit their homes in an attempt to maintain the media attention and ward off the police from going through with the eviction.

PCHR strongly condemns Israeli plans to confiscate 12,000 donums of Palestinian land in order to link the Illegal “Ma’ale Adumim” and “Qedar” settlements

Palestinian Centre for Human Rights

4 May 2009

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) strongly condemns the Israeli Ministry of the Interior’s decision to expand the illegal West Bank settlement of “Ma’ale Adumim” and to confiscate 12,000 donums (12 million square meters) of Palestinian land.

In the context of policies aimed to establishing a Jewish majority in occupied East Jerusalem – thereby consolidating its illegal annexation – the Israeli Minister of Interior, Elli Yishai, decided to adopt the recommendations of a special committee established by his ministry to link “Qedar” settlement with the larger “Ma’ale Adumim” settlement, east of Jerusalem. Under the Israeli Ministry of Interior’s plan, at least 12,000 donums of Palestinian land will be annexed to “Ma’ale Adumim”, linking it with the smaller “Qedar” settlement, which is located nearly 3 kilometers to the east. A few months ago, the Israeli media unveiled another plan to construct 6,000 new housing units in “Qedar” settlement. The implementation of these plans will disrupt geographical contiguity between the north and south West Bank, and will isolate Jerusalem from the West Bank as a whole. These decisions fundamentally undermine the viability of any future Palestinian State.

Israeli occupation authorities have recently started to establish a new settlement neighborhood in the densely Palestinian-populated al-Sawahra area, southeast of Jerusalem. They have also continued to undermine Palestinian construction in the city, in an effort to impose forced migration on the Palestinian population. Dozens of Palestinian families have been ordered to evacuate their homes under various pretexts, related to, inter alia, the lack of construction licenses and the construction of homes on lands allegedly owned by Israeli settlement associations. Recent orders targeted two floors constructed atop the Armenian Church in the Old Town, which was built more than 150 years ago.

International law explicitly prohibits the annexation of land consequent to the use of force (Article 47, Fourth Geneva Convention), a principle confirmed in Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter. International humanitarian law is unambiguous in this regard: occupation does not imply any right whatsoever to dispose of territory. Annexation is straightforwardly illegal.

Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention also explicitly prohibits the transfer and settlement of parts of the Occupying Power’s population in occupied territory. PCHR wish to highlight the underlying purpose of this provision, as noted in the authoritative commentary to the Geneva Conventions: “It is intended to prevent a practice adopted by during the Second World War by certain Powers, which transferred portions of their own population for political or racial reasons or in order … to colonize those territories. Such transfers worsened the economic situation of the native population and endangered their separate existence as a race.”

The United Nations estimate that there are currently between 480,000 and 550,000 illegal settlers living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

PCHR strongly condemns all Israeli policies and measures aimed at consolidating the annexation of occupied East Jerusalem, and:

1) Emphasizes that East Jerusalem is an integral part of Palestinian territories that have been occupied since the 1967 war.

2) Asserts that measures taken by Israeli occupation forces following the occupation of the city, especially the Israeli Knesset’s decisions on 28 June 1967 to annex the city to Israeli territory and on 30 July 1980 declaring that the “complete and united Jerusalem is the capital of Israel”, and the decision to expand the boundaries of Jerusalem, violate international law and United Nations resolutions.

3) Stresses that all decisions, plans and measures implemented by Israeli occupation authorities in the occupied city do not alter the legal status of the city.

In light of the above:

1) PCHR calls upon the High Contracting Parties, individually and collectively, to fulfill their legal and moral obligation under article 1 of the Convention to ensure Israel’s respect for the Convention in the OPT.

2) PCHR believes that international silence serves to encourage Israel to act as a state above the law and to continue violating international human rights law and international humanitarian law.

3) PCHR calls upon the international community to immediately act to force the Israeli government to stop all settlement activities in the OPT, especially in occupied East Jerusalem.

4) PCHR calls upon the European Union and/or its State members to activate article 2 of the Euro-Israeli Association Agreement, which affirm Israel’s respect for human rights as a condition for continue economic cooperation. PCHR calls also upon State members of the European Union to boycott Israeli goods, especially those produced in illegal Israeli settlements established in the OPT.