Tag: Jerusalem - Page 36 - International Solidarity Movement

Settlers occupying al-Kurd house in Sheikh Jarrah continue to harass evicted Palestinian families

8 December 2009

Settlers, who have since August 2009 taken over three houses in the Palestinian neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah in occupied East Jerusalem, have, after a series of violent attacks, initiated a number of actions this week with the intention of intimidating and harassing local Palestinians forcefully evicted from their homes.

In the past couple of days, Israeli settlers have three times harassed the evicted Palestinians. Even though their actions were not particularly violent, they highlight the daily suffering the Palestinians have to endure as the settlers take over more and more houses in the neighbourhood. The situation is especially difficult for the al-Kurds, as they have been forced to live alongside the settlers in their own house. On 1 December, a group of settlers occupied one section of the al-Kurd home which shares the same entrance gate and backyard as the other section, where the Palestinian family lives.

In the first incident, in the evening of Sunday 6 December, a group of about ten settlers occupying the front part of the al-Kurd, collected wood and set fire to it inside an oil barrel outside the house. They stole the oil barrel from the al-Kurds and proceeded to burn flammable items from the Kurd family belongings that the settlers took from the confiscated home and threw into the al-Kurds’ garden during the 1 December take-over. When the Kurd family discovered the theft in progress, they stopped the settlers by taking the barrel with burning wood away from them.

Settler leader Shlomo who threatened to kill Nabeel Kurd — Settler who threatened to kill Nabeel Kurd

Bed frame that belonged to the al-Kurd family. Its wooden parts have been stolen and burned by the settlers.

Kurd family belongings thrown out of their confiscated house by settlers — Al-Kurd family belongings that were thrown out of their house, now occupied by settlers

The second incident followed on Thursday 8 December at 9am, when one of the settler leaders called Shlomo stopped by at the al-Kurd family tent built outside of their confiscated house. Nabeel Kurd, father of the family, was alone in the tent. Shlomo verbally harassed Nabeel, including insults that were perceived as a threat to kill Nabeel.

The third incident happened in the evening of 8 December 2009, as settler youths that occupy the confiscated al-Kurd and Gawi houses vandalised a mural art painted by the local Palestinian children on the walls of the Ghawi, al-Kurd, and Qassem family properties. The settlers painted over the art with white paint; on the al-Kurd wall an elaborate painting of Handala, a famous Palestinian freedom cartoon figure, was covered with Israeli stars of David. Along with the Israeli flags hanging from the houses that the settlers have taken over in Sheikh Jarrah, these symbols further accentuate the presence of the Jewish settlers in the Palestinian neighbourhood and their goal to take over the whole area, drive out its Palestinian population and build a new Jewish-only settlement.

Mural art created by local children on the wall of al-Kurd house, vandalised by settlers who covered the Palestinian painting with stars of David

Background

So far, over 60 Palestinians living in the Karm Al-Ja’ouni neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah have been left homeless after being forcibly evicted from their homes by settlers aided by the Israeli forces.

The Gawi and Hannoun families, consisting of 53 members including 20 children, were thrown out from their homes on 2 August 2009. The Israeli forces surrounded the homes of the two families at 5.30am and, breaking in through the windows, forcefully dragged all residents into the street. The police also demolished the neighbourhood’s protest tent, set up by Um Kamel, following the forced eviction of her family in November 2008. In addition, an uninhabited section of another house belonging to the al-Kurd family was taken over by setters on 1 December 2009.

At present, all four houses are occupied by settlers and the whole area is patrolled by armed private settler security 24 hours a day. Both Hannoun and Gawi families, who 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 attacks from the settlers and harassment from the police.

The Karm Al-Ja’ouni neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah is home to 28 Palestinian families, all refugees from 1948, who received their houses from the UNRWA and Jordanian government in 1956. All face losing their homes in the manner of the Hannoun, Gawi and al-Kurd families.

The aim of the settlers is to turn the whole area into a new Jewish settlement and to create a Jewish continuum that will effectively cut off the Old City form the northern Palestinian neighborhoods. 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.

Armageddon is coming to East Jerusalem

Palestine Monitor

5 December 2009

This was the ominous warning issued yesterday by Rabbi Arik Asherman, director of Rabbis for Human Rights who believes that “if nothing changes, Jerusalem will burn.” His remarks come in response to a court decision on Monday permitting Israeli settlers to take possession of another Palestinian home in the East Jerusalem region of Sheikh Jarrah. This is the fifth family to be evicted in a neighbourhood where more and more Israeli flags are appearing atop of freshly occupied Palestinian homes.

Yesterday Rabbis for Human Rights organized a demonstration in Jerusalem protesting the courts decision bringing together 150 Israeli and international activists from organizations such as ICHAD, EAPPI and Anarchists against the Wall. As they marched through the streets in West Jerusalem, they received a mixed reaction from passer bys. Some cheered them on whilst others shouted ‘traitor’, spat at demonstrators and at one point a hose was turned on the crowd from behind the curtain of an upstairs apartment.

The demonstration culminated in the front yard of the Al-Kurd’s family home where the front section is now occupied by Israeli settlers and the family has been moved to the back.

The Al-Kurd house was built in 1956 and an extension added 10 years ago is the current source of contention. On Monday the Magistrates Court ruled it illegal and gave permission for a group of Israeli settlers to take occupation. An immediate appeal issued by the Al-Kurd family was dismissed. On Tuesday a group of Israeli settlers, accompanied by armed private security guards and Israeli police forces, took possession of the extension strewing the Al-Kurd’s belonging across the front yard.

Rising tension

As Shabbat prayers began late yesterday afternoon an influx of Orthodox Israelis gathered at the house, pushing through the crowd and throwing things at demonstrators. As the first and most important prayer began the Orthodox crowd moved from inside the house to clap, dance and sing in front of the on looking Al-Kurd family and demonstrators. An Israeli activist present described the move “as intentionally provocative.” He said “people deliberately gathered at the house for prayers to show solidarity with the settler family and to demonstrate to protestors their strength and ownership of the house.”

More evictions to come

A UN official at yesterday’s demonstration warned of further misery to come for Palestinian families in East Jerusalem. A letter from lawyers representing Nahalat Shimon International, the settler organization forcing through the evictions in East Jerusalem, has ordered two more Palestinian families to hand over the keys to their house to the legal firm by December 15th. According to the UN representative there are now 8 families under eviction orders and 5 families who have already been evicted from their homes.

Too little too late?

The eviction of Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem is illegal under international law which forbids an occupying power from transferring its own people into an occupied area. Despite this the international community has done little to abate the appropriation of houses here. There is growing concern that Zionists are attempting to create a new Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem which will strengthen Israeli claims to complete autonomy of the capital. In reaction to this there is speculation that the European Union will issue a statement this week supporting the establishment of East Jerusalem as a future capital of a Palestinian state but many fear this is too little too late. As more and more settlement houses become ‘facts on the ground’ the balance of power and ownership is East Jerusalem is shifting perhaps irrevocably.

The tension in East Jerusalem is intensifying daily and many including Rabbi Asherman fear that without swift and decisive international intervention the situation will soon approach “breaking point.”

Israel stripped thousands of Jerusalem Arabs of residency in 2008

Nir Hasson | Haaretz

2 December 2009

Last year set an all-time record for the number of Arab residents of East Jerusalem who were stripped of residency rights by the Interior Ministry. Altogether, the ministry revoked the residency of 4,577 East Jerusalemites in 2008 – 21 times the average of the previous 40 years.

In the first 40 years of Israeli rule over East Jerusalem combined, from 1967 to 2007, the ministry deprived only 8,558 Arabs of their residency rights – less than double the number who lost their permits last year alone. Thus of all the East Jerusalem Arabs who have lost their residency rights since 1967, about 35 percent did so in 2008.

According to the ministry, last year’s sharp increase stemmed from its decision to investigate the legal status of thousands of East Jerusalem residents in March and April, 2008. The probe was the brainchild of former interior minister Meir Sheetrit (Kadima) and Yaakov Ganot, who headed the ministry’s Population Administration.

The ministry said the probe uncovered thousands of people listed as East Jerusalem residents but were no longer living in Israel, and were therefore stripped of their residency. Most of those who lost their residency for this reason did not just move from Jerusalem to the West Bank, but were actually living in other countries, the ministry’s data shows.

Those deprived of their residency included 99 minors under the age of 18.

Attorney Yotam Ben-Hillel of Hamoked: Center for the Defense of the Individual said the 250,000 Arab residents of East Jerusalem have the same legal status as people who immigrated to Israel legally but are not entitled to citizenship under the Law of Return.

“They are treated as if they were immigrants to Israel, despite the fact that it is Israel that came to them in 1967,” he said.

A resident, unlike a citizen, can be stripped of his status relatively easily. All he has to do is leave the country for seven years or obtain citizenship, permanent residency or some other form of legal status in another country, and he loses his Israeli residency automatically.

Once a Palestinian has lost his residency, even returning to Jerusalem for a family visit can be impossible, Ben-Hillel said. Moreover, he said, some of those whose residency Israel revoked may not have legal status in any other country, meaning they have been made stateless.

“The list may include students who went for a few years to study in another country, and can now no longer return to their homes,” he said.

Officials at Hamoked, which obtained the ministry data via the Freedom of Information Act, said they were concerned that some of those who lost their residency rights may not even know it.

“The phenomenon of revoking people’s residency has reached frightening dimensions,” said Dalia Kerstein, Hamoked’s executive director. “The Interior Ministry operation in 2008 is just part of a general policy whose goal is to restrict the size of the Palestinian population and maintain a Jewish majority in Jerusalem. The Palestinians are natives of this city, not Johnny-come-latelys.”

Sheetrit, however, insisted that the operation was necessary. “What we discovered is just the tip of the iceberg,” he said. “The State of Israel pays billions of shekels a year in stipends to people who don’t even live here. We sent notices to every one of them about the intention to revoke their residency; we gave them time to appeal. Those who appealed weren’t touched.”

The ministry data shows that 89 Palestinians got their residency back after appealing. Sheetrit said the probe revealed very serious offenses – such as 32 people listed as living at a single address that did not even exist.

Israeli courts give permission for settlers to move into Palestinian home in Sheikh Jarrah

1 December 2009

For immediate release

Israeli settlers take over Palestinian home, elderly resident suffers severe medical complications

On Tuesday morning at around 9.30am, a group of settlers surrounded the al-Kurd family home in Sheikh Jarrah and took over a section of the house.

Fifteen to twenty settlers, accompanied by private armed security and Israeli police forces, entered an extension of the Palestinian house, and started clearing it of the family’s belongings. The family was not present in this section of the house in compliance with a previous court order, however local sources reported that the settlers also attempted, on several occasions, to gain entry to the inhabited part of the house.

One Palestinian resident, Khamis al-Gawi, has been arrested shortly after the settlers arrived, and is still being held at a local police station. Two international activists, American and Swedish nationals, who were filming the settlers taking over the house were also arrested by the police and their video cameras confiscated.

Later in the day, two Palestinian women suffered medical complications as a result of the take-over and had to be transported to a local hospital in an ambulance. One of them, the daughter of the owner of the house Refka al-Kurd, Nadia, was taken to the hospital with a suspected heart attack.

The take-over came minutes after an appeal, challenging an earlier court decision that deemed this section of the house illegal and gave the settlers the right to enter the property, submitted by the family’s lawyer, was rejected by the Magistrate Court this morning. The al-Kurd family only found out that their appeal was rejected when they saw the settlers approaching their home.

The first attempt of the settlers to take over the house came on 3 November 2009. In a similar scenario, settlers entered the al-Kurd property and locked themselves in, leaving only when escorted out by the Israeli police. However, the house remained occupied by armed settler security 24 hours a day since then. Further attempts followed including one on 26 November at 1am, when five settlers invaded the house, attacking the Palestinian family. An elderly woman, Refka al-Kurd (87) suffered a stroke following the incident.

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, based on an earlier agreement with the settlers (reached by the family’s former lawyer without their knowledge), which is currently still under dispute.

The al-Kurds have become the fourth Sheikh Jarrah family whose house (or a portion of the home) 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.

These actions are illegal under international law, which prohibits the occupying power (in this case Israel) from transferring its own population into the occupied territory. East Jerusalem, along with the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Golan Heights, is considered an occupied territory and its de-facto annexation by Israel has not been recognized by international law.

An appeal submitted by the family’s lawyer will be heard tomorrow, 2 December 2009 at noon, in the District Court in Jerusalem.

A court case, determining the ownership of the whole house, including the section built in 1956 by UNRWA, will be heard on 15 February 2010. Similarly to the Hannoun, Gawi and Kamel al-Kurd families in the past, this hearing can result in an eviction order against the al-Kurd family.

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.

The eviction orders 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 that claim to have 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 today’s take-over), 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 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 (al- Kurd family) and August 2009 (Hannoun and Gawi families for the second time). At present, settlers occupy all these houses and the whole area is patrolled by armed private security 24 hours a day.

The ultimate goal of the settler organizations is to turn the whole area 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 28th 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.

Israeli police demolish the only shelter of evicted Palestinian family for the fourth time

2 December 2009

At approximately 9am this Wednesday, four police vehicles containing eight Jerusalem police and four border police armed with automatic weapons came to Sheikh Jarrah and demolished the Gawi tent for the fourth time. The demolition took place as there were several people sleeping in the tent. The police failed to alert those sleeping to their destructive actions. The Palestinian family’s possessions were confiscated and removed in police pick-up trucks and golf carts. One hour later, a British national was arrested. The Gawi family has lived in the tent for four months now, since 2 August 2009 when they were forcefully evicted from their home, now occupied by settlers.

This action comes in the wake of yesterday’s settler invasion of the front section of the al-Kurd family home. As the settlers moved some of their possessions from the occupied Gawi home to the newly-confiscated al-Kurd home, the police were destroying and stealing the blankets, chairs, mattresses, lights and shelter from the evicted Gawi family. The settlers have also run electrical wires from the confiscated Gawi house to the confiscated al-Kurd house. As the constant crowd watched the settlers’ actions and those of the police, a British national was arrested, seemingly, for standing in the entrance of the al-Kurd family’s garden.