At around 4pm, on Saturday 2 January 2010 part of a main road in the Palestinian neighbourhood of Silwan collapsed. The section of road runs above tunneling work carried out by the Elad settler organisation. Despite the road collapsing in the mid-afternoon, it was not until 8pm that Israeli police arrived at the scene, after an Israeli bus serving the settler population drove into the hole in the road.
Silwan is a Palestinian village on the hills south of the Old City of Jerusalem, captured in 1967 by the Israeli army. It is one of several neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem where the Israeli state and settler organisations are forcing Palestinians from their homes. Almost 90 houses in the area are currently threatened with demolition, potentially displacing 1,000 – 1,500 residents and no construction permits have been issued for Palestinians in the area since 1967. Excavation works represent another threat to Palestinian residents; literally undermining their homes.
Tunneling by the Elad settler organisation, which also runs the ‘City of David’ tourist site in Silwan, has been frequently criticised for undermining the Palestinian neighbourhood. Elad director David Be’eri was filmed admitting that his excavations are carried out under people’s houses. He described the excavation method in which “we built from the top down” and “everything’s standing in the air” [due to the removal of fill]. “Then [the engineer] says: ‘you have to shut the whole thing’ [because of danger of collapse]. I tell him: ‘are you crazy?’”
Land located under people’s houses is considered their property under Israeli law, and digging in densely populated areas without the permission of property owners is therefore illegal. Despite this, ‘archaeological’ digging continues throughout the Old City and its surroundings with the complicity of Israeli authorities, police and courts. Also in the tape mentioned above, made about a year ago, the founding head of Elad, David Be’eri, says: “At a certain point we came to court. The judge approached me and said, ‘you’re digging under their houses.’ I said ‘I’m digging under their houses? King David dug under their houses. I’m just cleaning.’ He said to me, ‘Clean as much as possible.’ Since then, we’re just cleaning; we’re not digging.”
Less than six months ago a large part of the same road gave way meters from the most recent collapse. Local people say they are concerned that their homes may also collapse in the future. Subsidence caused by the tunneling is visible on buildings and roads around the excavation area. A Palestinian kindergarten opened in 1990 is located directly next to the opening of the tunnel. In recent months several large cracks have appeared in the building. Classes were affected by today’s road collapse. Several children protested the undermining of their school and the whole area.
This afternoon, work was underway to repair the collapsed area. Reconstruction is expected to take between one and two days, further disrupting the neighbourhood. Meanwhile, residents of Silwan remain concerned that future collapses will be more dangerous.
Elad Director admits undermining Palestinian homes:
Ryan Olander arrested by Israeli police in Sheikh Jarrah
2 January 2010
For immediate release:
Israeli authorities continue to detain Ryan Olander, US citizen and solidarity activist, who was illegally arrested on 18 December 2009 for his support of Palestinian families evicted from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah.
Minnesota resident Ryan Olander is facing deportation after being held in Israeli prisons for over two weeks. He spent his Christmas and New Year at a deportation facility in Ramle, where his request for release has been rejected by the prison judge. His lawyer submitted an appeal to the District Court in Tel Aviv on 27 December 2009 challenging the request of the Israeli Ministry of Interior for Mr. Olander’s deportation. The lawyer is anticipating the decision of the judge within the next 48 hours.
Ryan Olander was arrested from a tent the Palestinian al-Kurd family built in their own backyard following a recent setter take-over of a section of their house. He was drinking tea and talking to the family members when six Israeli police walked into the tent and took him for questioning at the Russian Compound police station in west Jerusalem. Despite being released without charges the following day, Ryan was illegally re-arrested by immigration police only a few moments later, right outside of the same police station that told him he was free to go.
Following his arrest, Mr. Olander made the following statement: “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 deportation from Israel.”
During the time Ryan Olander spent in Israeli prisons, the residents of Sheikh Jarrah in Occupied East Jerusalem have been subjected to further harassment and violence from the Israeli settlers and their supporters who recently took over the houses of several Palestinian families:
21 December 2009: An attack of about 40 settlers throwing stones at the Ftyaney family house left the Palestinians with two broken windows and fear of future attacks.
23 December 2009: Several hours of settler harassment following a Christmas celebration in Sheikh Jarrah included spray-painting ‘Death to Arabs’ in Hebrew, throwing fruit at Palestinians sitting in front of occupied al-Kurd house, violently pushing Palestinian residents and international activists, spray-painting one in her face.
25 December 2009: Around 30 settlers attacked the Palestinian Sabbagh family, breaking into their house and injuring seven family members. Two of the injured were cut with a knife and a pregnant woman, who was kicked in her stomach, had to be taken to hospital. Another family member was hit in the face and had a gun pointed at her.
26 December 2009: A group of settlers attacked Palestinians from the neighbourhood with stones. Three children and one adult were injured as result, and a French man who took pictures of the episode was violently attacked by a settler.
2 January 2010: A Palestinian woman, Nadia al-Kurd (65), had to be hospitalised with respiratory problems after being attacked by a settler in her own garden.
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.
Nadia al-Kurd, from Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood in Jerusalem was taken to hospital today after being attacked by an Israeli settler in her own garden.
At around 2pm, Nadia al-Kurd, 65, was violently pushed by a settler in an unprovoked attack. The settler, one of those currently occupying her neighbours’ house, forced open the gate of her garden, pushing Nadia to the ground. She suffered from breathing difficulties immediately afterwards. Some of those present administered first aid, however, as her state required professional medical treatment, she had to be transported by an ambulance to the hospital. She was discharged later in the afternoon.
When the Israeli police arrived following the attack, they arrested the assailant, identified by several witnesses. The same settler has been arrested before after previous attacks in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, where daily harassment of the Palestinian population by settlers and police is on the increase.
The house in which the attacker was found and arrested belongs to the Palestinian Gawi family. Displacing 37 members of the extended family, the settlers occupied the seven apartments of the house on 2 August 2009. Several other houses in the neighbourhood are currently threatened with eviction. The future of 51 members of the Shabagh family and their three homes will be decided in a court hearing on 18 January, potentially resulting in another eviction order. Sheikh Jarrah is one of several neighbourhoods currently subjected to attacks and evictions by settlers around Occupied East Jerusalem.
On 31 December 2009 IWPS received a call from the Mayor of Qarawat Bani Hasan to participate in a demonstration in solidarity with the residents of their village. The non-violent, peaceful demonstration organized by the Municipality took place on January 1 2009, and was in response to increase settler activity in the area.
The Mayor of Qarawat Bani Hasan reported that over the period of the last month armed Israeli Settlers and Israeli military from the illegal outpost of Havot Yair had been harassing and attacking farmers and shepherds who work regularly on land approximately a kilometer from the village centre. The land in the region in question is jointly owned by the villages of Qarawat Bani Hasan and Deir Istyia and hosts an ancient fresh water spring which is regularly utilised by farmers and shepherds from both villages. The Mayor also informed IWPS volunteers that the area is often visited by children from Qarawat Bani Hasan, who have also faced physical abuse by armed settlers from Havot Yair.
The illegal settler outpost of Havot Yair is an off shoot of the illegal Israeli colony of Yaqir and was first established in 1999, only to be later evacuated and re-established in 2001. The illegal outpost is located on a hill top, which is one – two kilometres from the valley in which the ancient spring is located.
Seven days ago, villagers notified the Mayor of Qarawat Bani Hasan that the illegal settlers had begun carrying out significant construction work in the spring area. This included the construction of a road and the digging of additional wells and cisterns (all of which were visible when IWPS visited the area). Villagers reported that the work carried out by the illegal settlers had taken place during the night.
The Mayor informed IWPS volunteers that on December 31 he visited the spring area in order to ascertain what settler activity was taking place, and to peacefully ask the settlers to cease illegal construction on his village’s land. According to the Mayor, the illegal settler he spoke to refused to cease construction and stated that the land was supposedly not being used by the village of Qarawat Bani Hasan and that he (the settler) was entitled to act on the Ottoman Law, utilized by the Israeli state, to claim ‘unused’ Palestinian land as ‘state land’.
In response to the illegal settler activity of their land, the residents of Qarawat Bani Hasan, decided to hold a demonstration in order to re-assert their ownership of the land. Approximately 100 residents of Qarawat Bani Hasan including children, were joined at the rally by the Assistant District Governor of the Salfit region; the Mayor of Deir Istyia; village activists from Deir Istyia, Hares and Marda; and volunteers from the International Women’s Peace Service.
The strong rally marched from the village centre to the spring valley region. The rally was accompanied by a ‘bagger’ (bulldozer/excavator machinery) organised by the Municipality, with the aim of reclaiming and rehabilitating the land in response to the settler construction activity. Upon reaching the valley and spring area, a noisy but peaceful demonstration ensued, with the bagger clearing a roadblock erected by the illegal settlers and refilling the large cistern/well chamber dug up by the settlers.
Over the coming weeks, the residents of Qarawat Bani Hasan hope to continue work on the rehabilitation of spring valley area and to carry out of range of non-violent peace programs to re-assert their ownership of the land.
Settlers launched an attack on a Palestinian bus near Zatara checkpoint today, injuring five and damaging the vehicle beyond repair.
Hale Yusef Abu Jabar left the northern West Bank city of Jenin at 3pm this afternoon, his fully-packed service-taxi carrying seven passengers bound for Ramallah. As they approached Zatara checkpoint south of Nablus, the settlement of Yitzhar to their west, waiting settlers descended from the adjacent hill and hurled stones at the vehicle.
Abu Jabar swerved the car, attempting to dodge the rocks as they punctured the windows and hit his terrified passengers, causing the car to topple. The attack occurred in clear sight of soldiers manning Zatara checkpoint, who continued to watch from their vantage point as settlers fled the scene, returning to the settlement.
Red Crescent medics arrived shortly thereafter, transporting victims to Al-Ittihad Hospital in Nablus. The 5 injured were Abu Jabar, Rifad Jamal Diad Sayid, Abdullah Mustafa Arafi, Iyed Haris Mustafa Sare and Salaam Machmoud. For Abu Jabar, the injuries to his body is secondary to the financial damage, his service-taxi written off by the attack.
Settler violence has sharply increased this month, with reports of settlers launching many strikes on Palestinians, their vehicles and property in the area. On the front line of the violence is notorious Yitzhar settlement, ill-famed for its ideological residents and their repeated targeting of neighbouring Palestinian villages.
