Tag: Jerusalem - Page 37 - International Solidarity Movement

Residents of Sheikh Jarrah hold Eid al-Adha prayers and demonstrations against ethnic cleansing and house evictions

27 November 2009

On Friday 27 November 2009, the Eid al-Adha celebration in Sheikh Jarrah, a Palestinian neighbourhood in occupied East Jerusalem, was marked by prayers and demonstrations.

In the night unto Eid, the sleep in the neighbourhood was disturbed at 2am by loud music coming from a street party attended by Jewish settler youths, who gathered outside the Shimon HaTzadik Tomb, located just behind the Palestinian houses. This is the same location from which Jewish settlers threw stones at the Palestinian houses in the middle of the night on Friday 6 November. The disturbing music was played for 30 minutes until the police blue-lights drew near.

At 7am, the Palestinian families gathered in an open field in the neighbourhood to hold the traditional Eid Friday prayer. The prayer was led by Sheikh Raed Salah, an influential and well known imam, who in his speech talked about the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948, 1967, and until present. The speech emphasized the current evictions and demolitions of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem, including the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, and blasted the illegality and immorality of these actions that are forcing Palestinians out of East Jerusalem and replacing them with Jewish settler population. The two-hour event was broadcasted live on Palestinian TV and ended with games, music, and sweets for the children.

Residents of Sheikh Jarrah hold an Eid Friday prayer against house evictions

At 3pm, the second demonstration and march against the evictions and demolitions of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem arrived in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood. The demonstration takes place every Friday, and gathers Israeli, Palestinian, and international activists at Zion Square in West Jerusalem at 1:30pm to subsequently march to the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood in occupied East Jerusalem. An Israeli samba drum band helps to make the demonstration vibrant and also fun for the Palestinian children who towards the end of the demonstration learn to play the drums together with the Israeli activists. In Sheikh Jarrah, the demonstrators were, as usual, filmed and observed by heavily armed Israeli occupation forces.

Israeli activists and Palestinian children observed by heavily armed Israeli occupation forces

At 6pm, around 15 Jewish settlers gathered outside the Atiyeh family home in Sheikh Jarrah and conducted a provocative prayer directed towards the home; provocative because it manifests their desire to evict the Palestinian family and replace them with Jewish settlers. 28 Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah are threatened by eviction, including the Kamel Kurd, Hannoun, and Gawi families that were made homeless in the past year. This was the fourth provocative prayer in the past five weeks, directed twice at the Gawi family house (23 and 30 October) and twice at the Atiyeh family house (20 and 27 November). Each time, the provocation has been accompanied by heavily armed Israeli occupation police. This time a friend of the Sheikh Jarrah families protested against the provocation by standing close to the settler group and performing a muslim prayer towards the Atiyeh family house. Afterwards, the praying Palestinian was questioned by the police while the settlers were not. During the prayers, the police unnecessarily forced some Palestinian children to back well away from the street.

Background

The Gawi and Hannoun families, consisting of 53 members including 20 children, have been left homeless after they were forcibly evicted from their houses 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.

At present, all three 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.

Israel’s occupation, linked by rail

Seth Freedman | The Guardian

26 November 2009

The architects of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank are highly skilled at the art of needlework, deftly stitching up land inside Israel proper and disputed territory over the Green Line as though it was the most natural thing in the world. According to their logic, it should be possible to seamlessly suture together the two parts without raising eyebrows either at home or abroad, regardless of the contravention of both international law and basic morality that such actions entail.

All that is required is a healthy dose of chutzpah, combined with a drip-drip effect in which a steady stream of expropriating activities are undertaken at a slow but relentless pace, in the hope that insufficient feathers are ruffled to put a halt to the overarching campaign of annexation.

The Jerusalem light railway is a case in point: in isolation, few Israelis would be too perturbed by the idea of providing a rail link between the city centre and outlying towns and suburbs on the periphery of the capital. However, in doing so, the authorities are simultaneously declaring their view that settlements such as French Hill and Pisgat Ze’ev are integral parts of Jerusalem and banging yet another nail into the coffin of a viable Palestinian state.

Under the guise of a desire to ease traffic congestion on Jerusalem’s streets, the project bears all the hallmarks of previous efforts to stake a permanent and intractable claim to areas that once might have been considered as appropriate territory to concede as part of a permanent settlement with the Palestinians. As the Alternative Information Centre notes, “by providing direct access to [these locations], the main illegal settlements will finally be linked with the centre and western part of the City. The adverse effects of this will serve to diminish any chance of East Jerusalem becoming the future capital of a Palestinian state under a two-state solution”.

Palestinian officials this week issued a call for overseas assistance in preventing the completion of the rail link, having recognised that without such external pressure there is no hope of putting a halt to the illegal construction. Basing their opposition on statutes that deem such building work a violation of international law, the Palestinian Authority urged all Arab countries to end their links with companies associated with the light railway – including French conglomerates Veolia and Alstom – in the hope that such a stance would encourage the corporations involved to pull out of the project.

The Palestinians know full well that the rail link’s presence will further ingrain in Israelis’ minds the idea that every affected township over the Green Line is to be viewed simply as a benign part of Greater Jerusalem, rather than a malignant settlement that threatens the security of both Israelis and Palestinians in the long term. To confirm their fears, they need only look as far as Gilo or Har Homa, both areas built over the Green Line outside Jerusalem’s original city limits, but now treated as no more contentious than Rehavia or the German Colony when it comes to Israel’s continued construction there.

Last week’s international criticism of plans to build a further 900 homes in Gilo raised hackles among the Israeli public. Many Israelis have become so accustomed to the idea that Gilo is part of Israel proper that they cannot for the life of them understand why anyone should deny them the right to construct houses there at will. Such a mind-set did not develop overnight; rather, it took years of patient joining of the dots by successive Israeli governments – by way of transport links, forging social ties between Gilo and other parts of Jerusalem, and so on – to convince Israelis that Gilo had come in from the cold and was now Jerusalem through and through.

When my army unit was based in Har Gilo (a suburb of Gilo even deeper into West Bank territory), none of the residents living alongside our headquarters saw themselves as settlers. Those to whom we spoke thought of themselves as simply Jerusalemites with no more reason to feel guilty about the location of their homes than those dwelling in Tel Aviv or Haifa. The fact that their houses were a stone’s throw from Palestinian towns such as Bet-Jalla did little to change their minds: the Israeli government had thrown a comforting arm around their shoulders and told them all was well, and that was what mattered. But all is not well – whether in terms of Israel’s relationship with the outside world, the spectre looming of a third Palestinian intifada, or the fact that Israelis are unquestioningly becoming more and more used to their collective status as perpetual oppressors of another people – and time is not on the peace camp’s side.

The light railway and the construction plans for Gilo are not deal-breakers on their own, but the whole is greater than the sum of the parts when it comes to the annexation of the West Bank, and all interested parties should be doing their utmost to oppose anything that further cements an Israeli presence in the area. To sit back and do nothing is to be complicit with the insidious plans of those who seek never to accommodate Palestinian needs in terms of their statehood. Israelis, Palestinians and outsiders alike must continue to stand up to the occupation machine’s operators, before the rot sets in completely and for ever.

Palestinian woman suffers a stroke after settlers invade her family’s house in Sheikh Jarrah

26 November 2009

image1(2) — Settler who violently attacked Maysa and Munjad al-Kurd

On Thursday, November 26, 2009 at 1:00am, five settlers and settler security, who are currently occupying the Gawi family house in Sheikh Jarrah, attempted to take over a section of a house belonging to the Palestinian al-Kurd family.

The Israeli police were alerted immediately, however, before they managed to arrive, the settlers started attacking the Palestinians living in the house. One settler violently pushed a member of the al-Kurd family, Maysa, against a wall and thereafter grabbed her son, Munjad, by the lapel. After their arrival and a long discussion with the al-Kurd family concerning the legal status of the house, the Israeli police reluctantly escorted the settlers out.

As a result of the tumult, Refka Kurd, 85, suffered a stroke. She was taken to a hospital and is in stable condition.

This is the third settler incursion into the al-Kurd family house in
the last three weeks. Both the border police, equipped with automatic weapons, and the Israeli police who arrived at the scene, seemed to have been convinced about the settlers’ right to enter the house and determined to allow them to remain on the premises. After a long discussion with the family and the settlers, who claimed to have legal documents giving them the right to enter the house, the Israeli forces ordered the settlers to leave. These documents do not grant any explicit right to the settlers to enter and remain in the al-Kurd property.

As the Israeli police escorted the intruders back to the house of the Palestinian Gawi family, occupied by the settlers since the forceful take-over in August, the heated exchange that ensued agitated Refka Kurd who then suffered a stroke confirmed by a CT scan.

The recent escalation of violent settler incursions has created an unbearable and dangerous situation for the Palestinian family and, as result, forced the al-Kurd children to sleep at their grandmother’s house, outside of Sheikh Jarrah.

Following the incursion, the settler who assaulted the two family members filed a complaint at a local police station, claiming that it was the al-Kurds, who attacked him. In contrast, Maysa and Munjad were not allowed to file a complaint concerning the violence inflicted upon them. “The settler filed a complaint claiming that I attacked him. I went to the police station to file a complaint, but was unable to, because they would not allow my lawyer to accompany me,” said Munjad.

The al-Kurds have become the fourth Sheikh Jarrah family whose house (or part of it) 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.

In a strategic plan, settlers have been utilizing discriminatory laws to expand their presence in Occupied East Jerusalem. Palestinians, who face difficulties in acquiring building permits from the municipality, are often left with no legal recourse for extending their homes to accompany their growing families. The Israeli authorities exercise their abilities to demolish and evict Palestinian residents, while ignoring building violations from the Israeli population in East Jerusalem.

Israeli police escalate harassment of Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah

21 November 2009

Police officer who threatened to murder Saleh Diab

In the past few days, Israeli police have twice harassed Palestinians in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of occupied East Jerusalem.

First, in the evening of Thursday 19 November 2009, an Israeli police officer threatened to murder Saleh Diab, who’s family is at risk of being evicted from their home in Sheikh Jarrah. The situation arose when Palestinians in the neighbourhood gathered around a concussion suffering victim of a fight between two Palestinians, and an ambulance and three police vehicles arrived at the scene. The police talked to Palestinians in the crowd and after a while grabbed Saleh (who was not involved in the fight) by the arm and took him away from the crowd to behind their vehicle as if they intended to arrest him. An international activist following Saleh to observe his treatment was instructed by the police to back well away. The police then talked to Saleh before releasing him. According to Saleh, one of the police officers said that he would kill Saleh.

Second, around midnight of Saturday 21 November 2009, an Israeli police vehicle and two police officers arrived at the Gawi family tent, where the Gawi family have been living since they were forcefully evicted from their now occupied house on 2 August 2009. Eight Palestinians (family members and neighbours) and an international activist were sitting around the fire by the tent. The police said the settlers in the Gawi house accused the Palestinians of throwing stones at the house; a false accusation according to the Palestinians and activist.

The police collected the ID cards of the Palestinians and checked them in their computer system. The police then told the Palestinians that they were all to be arrested. The situation, with only two police officers to arrest a larger group of Palestinians and on false accusation, prompted the Palestinians to question the police action. After further discussion, the police returned the ID cards and left without arresting anyone, 15 minutes after they arrived.

Settler incursions of Palestinian homes in Sheikh Jarrah

18 November 2009

On Wednesday 18 November 2009 at 10:30am, one of the settlers who are occupying the Ghawi family house in Sheikh Jarrah, climbed over a wall in order to enter the neighbouring Palestinian property. Amal Qassem, who lives in the house, was shocked to discover the settler in her backyard and another settler handing tools and a ladder over the wall to him. They stated that they were going to repair water leaks in the wall and refused to leave.

Amal Qassem reported the trespassing to the police who arrived 30 minutes later. Only after that the settlers finally left.

Settler trespassing the Palestinian property

The second settler involved in the attempt to enter the Qassem property

Later that day, at 2pm, another two settlers living in the occupied Gawi family house, attempted to enter a Palestinian property across the street. Claiming they had the right to enter, they opened the gate leading to the house owned by the Kurd family and walked through, making their way to the half of the property which has been occupied by settler security forces since the forceful takeover on 3 November 2009. The family, who gathered outside of their house succeeded in their attempt to stop the settlers, who eventually left.

The settler’s claims to have the right to enter the house, however, contradict a verbal agreement reached with the Israeli police on 3 November 2009, the day of the house take-over, which instructed the settlers to stay away from the house and allowed their security forces to stand on the street outside the gate. Despite this agreement, settler security forces have continued to occupy the house. The al-Kurd family have asked the security forces several times to show police or court orders that give them the right to be on their property, but the security forces have failed to produce such a document. On the day after the settlers’ provocative action, an Israeli court issued a written statement that the court will reach a decision about the occupied house on 29 November.

Kurd family posting the latest court order on the door of their occupied house