On Wednesday 23 December at 11.30pm, as every other night, settlers began to circulate in the street between the occupied Gawi house and the half-occupied al-Kurd house in Sheikh Jarrah. After about an hour of general harassment of the Palestinian families living in the neighbourhood since 1956, the settlers increased their aggression and started throwing fruit at the people who sat in front of the Kurd family house to protect it from further invasions. Two settlers started making graffiti and sprayed over Palestinian flags painted on the wall of the al-Kurd backyard, while the rest pushed and cursed the Palestinians and internationals, who verbally tried to make them stop. A solidarity activist filming the episode was spray-painted in the face numerous times. Three border policemen stood next by and watched without interfering for the whole duration of the attack.
During the Christmas celebration in Sheikh Jarrah, children from the neighborhood painted Palestinian flags on the al-Kurd wall to cover the stars of David the settlers had painted days earlier. The Israeli police came within 3 minutes and stopped them. The settlers living in the occupied Gawi house, reacted by adding another 3 Israeli flags in addition to the 8 big ones and 18 small ones that they have already plastered outside the stolen house.
The settlers started their nightly harassment campaign by trying to reach the Christmas tree but were prevented from reaching it by the Israeli border police, who have a 24 hour presence in the neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah. After about half an hour, the settlers seemed to have dropped their original plans and started verbally harassing the Palestinians and the internationals; who were awake in order to protect Gawi family members, as well as the al-Kurds, who had half of their house stolen by settlers and have been forced to share their backyard with them. The settlers were particularly focused on an elderly man and an international woman. They called the man by his name and kept at cursing him while they sexual harassed the woman by sign language, touching their own bodies and making kissing sounds.
At around 12.30 the settlers, started making graffiti on the wall of the al-Kurd family house, painting over the Palestinian flags and writing ‘death to Arabs’ in Hebrew. They further increased the violence, pushed the Palestinians and spray-painted the international woman who filmed the episode in the face. The border police observed the aggressive behavior but did not interfere and only phoned the police about half an hour later when it had already been called from by the attacked several times.
The police finally arrived, around 1.30am, and promised to arrest the settlers responsible for the attack, but even when they were shown the film and told where the settlers ran to hide, they refused going there. Instead they went into the occupied part of the al-Kurd house and took one settler, who wore a ski mask while painting, with them to the police station. He returned after 20 minutes because there were no evidence that he had taken part in the actions.
The Palestinians in the neighborhood will go to the Israeli police and file a complaint about the poor intervention of the police, as well as try to encourage them to arrest the settler whose face is shown in the video. Three days ago a Palestinian man was held at the police station for 24 hours for encouraging the children in the neighborhood to paint over offensive graffiti painted by the settlers on the same wall. The Palestinians only ask to have equal law rights in occupied East Jerusalem, where even the rights to live in their houses have been denied.
“Merry Christmas to all the Christians and Happy New Year,” Nasser Gawi after his first Christmas tree decoration.
On Wednesday, 23 December, residents of Sheikh Jarrah organised a Christmas celebration outside the occupied homes of the Gawi and al-Kurd families. At 11am two trees, donated by the Coalition for Jerusalem, were brought by the Palestinian community, and were continually decorated thoughout the day. The decorations started from handmade paper baskets filled with candy for the children, a panda bear and monkey toys, who had been living outside with the Ghawe family, and ended with streamers, tensile, and a bright lit up star. The best decorations were the Palestinian flags flowing across the trees.
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The celebration started around 4pm and more than 100 people came to join in the fun. There were lots of media outlets that showed up and seemed to enjoy themselves; even with the constant presence of the settlers. Father Christmas made a surprise visit and brought gifts to the children. Peter McClowish, head of a local church in Jerusalem, gave a very moving speech due to the neighborhood being both Muslim and Christian.
Nearing the end of the party, sweets were passed around and everyone sang Christmas carols and the Palestinian National Anthem. The children spray-painted Palestinian flags on the gate of the half occupied al-Kurd family house. By doing this they covered up stars of David painted by settlers days earlier. This was not received well by the settlers, who illegally occupy the Gawi family home, so they added 3 more flags to the 8 already plastered on the house.
If only for one day, the community had a bit of normalcy and genuine fun.
Background
Approximately 475 Palestinian residents living in the Karm Al-Ja’ouni neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, located directly north of the Old City, face imminent eviction from their homes in the manner of the Hannoun and Gawi families, and the al-Kurd family before them. All 28 families are refugees from 1948, mostly from West Jerusalem and Haifa, whose houses in Sheikh Jarrah were built and given to them through a joint project between the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and the Jordanian government in 1956.
The ultimate goal of the settler organizations is to evict all Palestinians from the area and turn it into a new Jewish settlement and to create a Jewish continuum that will effectively cut off the Old City form the northern Palestinian neighborhoods. On 28 August 2008, Nahalat Shimon International filed a plan to build a series of five and six-story apartment blocks – Town Plan Scheme (TPS) 12705 – in the Jerusalem Local Planning Commission. If TPS 12705 comes to pass, the existing Palestinian houses in this key area would be demolished, about 500 Palestinians would be evicted, and 200 new settler units would be built for a new settlement: Shimon HaTzadik.
Implanting new Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank is illegal under many international laws, including Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The plight of the Gawi, al-Kurd and the Hannoun families is just a small part of Israel’s ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people from East Jerusalem.
Another settler attack on a family in Sheikh Jarrah on Monday 21 December leaves the family with two broken windows and fear of future attacks.
After dark on Monday 21 December 2009 a group of around 40 settlers gathered outside the Ftyaney family house. At about 7pm the settlers began throwing stones at the windows of the Ftyaney home. They then threatened the mother of the family who was at home with her three daughters.
The Ftyaney family lives in a house directly beneath the garden of the house of Fawzia and Muhammed al-Kurd which is now occupied by Israeli settlers. On Monday evening Rema, the mother of the family, heard stones striking her front gate and she rushed to the door only to realize that 40 settlers were attacking the house. When the settlers saw her in the door they started to scream at her that she should bring out her sons. No men were present in the house since the father of the family was at work. Rema called the Israeli police. They keep a 24 hour presence in the neighbourhood, but still took 15 minutes to arrive. When Rema talked to the police the settlers shouted at them, “don’t talk to the woman!”
One of Rema’s daughters was too afraid to sleep after the attack. The family has been attacked several times, the last time a month ago and Rema explained that it is not unusual; there are Palestinians being attacked by settlers every day in the neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah.
Fawzia and Muhammed al-Kurd were evicted from their home in Sheikh Jarrah on 8 November 2008. Since the eviction, settlers have moved into their home and the violence against the Palestinian residence in the neighbourhood has increased. At least two other attacks on Palestinian residents of Sheikh Jarrah have taken place in the past five days. On Friday a mother of six was violently attacked in the street outside her home. When her sons came to her assistance the settlers threw stones at them and injured two. They had to be taken to the hospital. On Sunday a little girl was attacked in the street by a settler. Palestinians living in Sheikh Jarrah are also subject to other forms of harassment from settlers. Garbage and stones are regularly thrown down in the garden of the Ftyaney family from the occupied house of the al-Kurds.
The displacements in Karm Al-Ja’ouni (where the Ftyaney family lives) are part of a larger settlement project. Areas targeted in Sheikh Jarrah include Kubanyat Im Haroun, the Shepherd Hotel, Karm el-Mufti and the Planned Amana HQ. Other Palestinian neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem that are affected by settlement expansion include Silwan and the Mount of Olives. The United Nations already raised concerns about the humanitarian consequences of the illegal settlements in Sheikh Jarrah in August 2009. The Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) called for the immediate end to forced evictions and house demolitions and the displacement of Palestinian communities.
Despite these attacks, residents of Sheikh Jarrah continue to support each other. On Wednesday 23 residents will have a Christmas dinner in the neighbourhood. On Friday, a regular demonstration against ethnic cleansing and house evictions will start at 2pm in Sheikh Jarrah.
Imprisoned American citizen and Minnesota resident Ryan Olander to be deported to the US after being arrested in Sheikh Jarrah, Occupied East Jerusalem, whilst visiting Palestinian family whose house has been taken over by Israeli settlers.
Ryan was visiting the al-Kurds in the tent the Palestinian family built in their own backyard, after the recent setter take-over of a section of their house. At 1.15pm, 6 Israeli police walked into the tent, where Ryan was talking to the family members and drinking tea, and took him for questioning at the Russian Compound police station in west Jerusalem.
From the Givon prison in Ramle where Mr. Olander is currently awaiting his deportation hearing he reported that:
“On Friday, 18 December, I was placed under arrest illegally. A police officer forcibly removed me from the al-Kurd private residence and proceeded to file a fallacious police report stating I participated in what they claimed was an illegal demonstration and refused to disperse when ordered. In fact, I was arrested before the demonstration even took place.
I have become a target of the police for standing in solidarity with the Palestinians of Sheikh Jarrah who struggle against the unjust and illegal evictions from the places they have called their homes for nearly 60 years. Now I face illegal deportation from Israel.”
His arrest happened just before a peaceful demonstration of around 300 people, held in solidarity with the evicted Palestinian residents of Sheikh Jarrah, was violently dispersed by the Israeli police. Following a violent dispersal of a similar demonstration the previous week, the police blocked all entrances to Sheikh Jarrah in an attempt to prevent protesters from accessing the Palestinian neighbourhood and used unprecedented force against those who succeeded in reaching the al-Kurd and Gawi family houses, currently occupied by Israeli settlers. Twenty six Israeli protesters were arrested, three of them wearing clown costumes. Similarly to last week, the police used a section of the al-Kurd house, previously taken over by settlers, to detain the arrested demonstrators.
Ryan, along with other arrestees from Sheikh Jarrah reported ill-treatment by the police, who subjected them to several strip-searches, denied them food and water for prolonged periods of time and held them outside of the police station until late at night, with insufficient protection against the cold conditions. Unlike the 26 arrested Israeli citizens, who were brought in front of the judge, Ryan was released by the police before the beginning of the trial on Saturday, 19 December, only to be illegally re-arrested by immigration police right outside of the same police station that told him he was free to go.
The police have used the same tactics previously, when three foreign nationals, who were arrested at a peaceful demonstration Sheikh Jarrah on 11 December 2009, were released by the judge in a court hearing held at the Russian Compound the following day, only to be illegally arrested again and taken straight from the courtroom to a deportation facility. All three were released the following morning, over 40 hours after their initial arrest.
Background on Sheikh Jarrah
Approximately 475 Palestinian residents living in the Karm Al-Ja’ouni neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, located directly north of the Old City, face imminent eviction from their homes in the manner of the Hannoun and Gawi families, and the al-Kurd family before them. All 28 families are refugees from 1948, mostly from West Jerusalem and Haifa, whose houses in Sheikh Jarrah were built and given to them through a joint project between the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and the Jordanian government in 1956.
So far, settlers took over houses of four Palestinian families, displacing around 60 residents, including 20 children. At present, settlers occupy all these houses and the whole area is patrolled by armed private security 24 hours a day. The evicted Palestinian families, some of whom have been left without suitable alternative accommodation since August, continue to protest against the unlawful eviction from the sidewalk across the street from their homes, facing regular violent attacks from the settlers and harassment from the police.
The Gawi family, for example, had their only shelter, a small tent built near their house, destroyed by the police and all their belongings stolen five times. In addition, the al-Kurd family has been forced to live in an extremely difficult situation, sharing the entrance gate and the backyard of their house with extremist settlers, who occupied a part of the al-Kurd home in December 2009. The settlers subject the Palestinian family to regular violent attacks and harassment, making their life a living hell.
The ultimate goal of the settler organizations is to evict all Palestinians from the area and turn it into a new Jewish settlement and to create a Jewish continuum that will effectively cut off the Old City form the northern Palestinian neighborhoods. On 28 August 2008, Nahalat Shimon International filed a plan to build a series of five and six-story apartment blocks – Town Plan Scheme (TPS) 12705 – in the Jerusalem Local Planning Commission. If TPS 12705 comes to pass, the existing Palestinian houses in this key area would be demolished, about 500 Palestinians would be evicted, and 200 new settler units would be built for a new settlement: Shimon HaTzadik.
Implanting new Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank is illegal under many international laws, including Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The plight of the Gawi, al-Kurd and the Hannoun families is just a small part of Israel’s ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people from East Jerusalem.
Legal background
The eviction orders, issued by Israeli courts, are a result of claims made in 1967 by the Sephardic Community Committee and the Knesseth Yisrael Association (who since sold their claim to the area to Nahalat Shimon) – settler organizations whose aim is to take over the whole area using falsified deeds for the land dating back to 1875. In 1972, these two settler organizations applied to have the land registered in their names with the Israel Lands Administration (ILA). Their claim to ownership was noted in the Land Registry; however, it was never made into an official registry of title. The first Palestinian property in the area was taken over at this time.
The case continued in the courts for another 37 years. Amongst other developments, the first lawyer of the Palestinian residents reached an agreement with the settler organizations in 1982 (without the knowledge or consent of the Palestinian families) in which he recognized the settlers’ ownership in return for granting the families the legal status of protected tenants. This affected 23 families and served as a basis for future court and eviction orders (including the al-Kurd family house take-over in December 2009), despite the immediate appeal filed by the families’ new lawyer. Furthermore, a Palestinian landowner, Suleiman Darwish Hijazi, has legally challenged the settlers’ claims. In 1994 he presented documents certifying his ownership of the land to the courts, including tax receipts from 1927. In addition, the new lawyer of the Palestinian residents located a document, proving the land in Sheikh Jarrah had never been under Jewish ownership. The Israeli courts rejected these documents.
The first eviction orders were issued in 1999 based on the (still disputed) agreement from 1982 and, as a result, two Palestinian families (Hannoun and Gawi) were evicted in February 2002. After the 2006 Israeli Supreme Court finding that the settler committees’ ownership of the lands was uncertain, and the Lands Settlement officer of the court requesting that the ILA remove their names from the Lands Registrar, the Palestinian families returned back to their homes. The courts, however, failed to recognize new evidence presented to them and continued to issue eviction orders based on decisions from 1982 and 1999 respectively. Further evictions followed in November 2008 (Kamel al-Kurd family) and August 2009 (Hannoun and Gawi families for the second time). An uninhabited section of a house belonging to the al-Kurd family was taken over by settlers on 1 December 2009.
It is generally recognised that the Middle East peace process is in the doldrums, almost moribund. Israeli settlement expansion within Palestine continues, and PLO leaders refuse to join in renewed peace talks without a settlement freeze, knowing that no Arab or Islamic nation will accept any comprehensive agreement while Israel retains control of East Jerusalem.
US objections have impeded Egyptian efforts to resolve differences between Hamas and Fatah that could lead to 2010 elections. With this stalemate, PLO leaders have decided that President Mahmoud Abbas will continue in power until elections can be held – a decision condemned by many Palestinians.
Even though Syria and Israel under the Olmert government had almost reached an agreement with Turkey’s help, the current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, rejects Turkey as a mediator on the Golan Heights. No apparent alternative is in the offing.
The UN general assembly approved a report issued by its human rights council that called on Israel and the Palestinians to investigate charges of war crimes during the recent Gaza war, but positive responses seem unlikely.
In summary: UN resolutions, Geneva conventions, previous agreements between Israelis and Palestinians, the Arab peace initiative, and official policies of the US and other nations are all being ignored. In the meantime, the demolition of Arab houses, expansion of Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and Palestinian recalcitrance threaten any real prospect for peace.
Of more immediate concern, those under siege in Gaza face another winter of intense personal suffering. I visited Gaza after the devastating January war and observed homeless people huddling in makeshift tents, under plastic sheets, or in caves dug into the debris of their former homes. Despite offers by Palestinian leaders and international agencies to guarantee no use of imported materials for even defensive military purposes, cement, lumber, and panes of glass are not being permitted to pass entry points into Gaza. The US and other nations have accepted this abhorrent situation without forceful corrective action.
I have discussed ways to assist the citizens of Gaza with a number of Arab and European leaders and their common response is that the Israeli blockade makes any assistance impossible. Donors point out that they have provided enormous aid funds to build schools, hospitals and factories, only to see them destroyed in a few hours by precision bombs and missiles. Without international guarantees, why risk similar losses in the future?
It is time to face the fact that, for the past 30 years, no one nation has been able or willing to break the impasse and induce the disputing parties to comply with international law. We cannot wait any longer. Israel has long argued that it cannot negotiate with terrorists, yet has had an entire year without terrorism and still could not negotiate. President Obama has promised active involvement of the US government, but no formal peace talks have begun and no comprehensive framework for peace has been proposed. Individually and collectively, the world powers must act.
One recent glimmer of life has been the 8 December decision of EU foreign ministers to restate the long-standing basic requirements for peace commonly accepted within the international community, including that Israel’s pre-1967 boundaries will prevail unless modified by a negotiated agreement with the Palestinians. A week later the new EU foreign policy chief, Baroness Catherine Ashton, reiterated this statement in even stronger terms and called for the international Quartet to be “reinvigorated”. This is a promising prospect.
President Obama was right to insist on a two-state solution and a complete settlement freeze as the basis for negotiations. Since Israel has rejected the freeze and the Palestinians won’t negotiate without it, a logical step is for all Quartet members (the US, EU, Russia and UN) to support the Obama proposal by declaring any further expansion of settlements illegal and refusing to veto UN security council decisions to condemn such settlements. This might restrain Israel and also bring Palestinians to the negotiating table.
At the same time, the Quartet should join with Turkey and invite Syria and Israel to negotiate a solution to the Golan Heights dispute.
Without ascribing blame to any of the disputing parties, the Quartet also should begin rebuilding Gaza by organising relief efforts under the supervision of an active special envoy, overseeing a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, and mediating an opening of the crossings. The cries of homeless and freezing people demand immediate relief.
This is a time for bold action, and the season for forgiveness, reconciliation and peace.
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