Tag: Sheikh Jarrah - Page 26 - International Solidarity Movement

Sheikh Jarrah demonstrates against settler takeover and demolition

27 July 2009

Israeli police arrested the woman on the right.

At 4pm today Sheikh Jarrah demonstrated against the Israeli settler takeover and partial demolition of the Darwish Hijazi home yesterday.

The day began with a meeting held in Sheikh Jarrah’s Um Kamal protest tent, which has become a powerful symbol of Palestinian steadfastness in face of the Israeli ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem, and international Human Rights Workers (HRWs) heard moving stories from local residents whose houses are under threat of demolition. From there, around 30 demonstrators accompanied by HRWs marched on the Hijazi house to find Israeli settlers on the stolen land. The protesters attempted to gain access to the property, only to be initially denied by settler security and Israeli police, and then a large deployment of Israeli Police and Border Police.

The protesters remained at the site, chanting and demanding the settlers leave the property. The Border police later began to attack the crowd, pushing and kicking protesters as they lay on the ground. One Palestinian woman was arrested.

As of 7.30pm, the protest has disbanded but HRWs remain with Mair Hasan, the head of a nearby household who has just today been issued with orders that he must vacate his property for two weeks, starting from 8.30pm tonight, keeping a distance of at least 1km from the home. He is married and has 5 children.

The case of Sheikh Jarrah

The Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem was built by the UN and Jordanian government in 1956 to house Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war. However, with the the start of the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem, following the 1967 war, settlers began claiming ownership of the land the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood was build on.

Stating that they had purchased the land from a previous Ottoman owner in the 1800s, settlers claimed ownership of the land. In 1972 settlers successfully registered this claim with the Israeli Land Registrar.

The 28 families face eviction from their homes. In November 2008, the al-Kurd family was violently evicted from their home in Sheikh Jarrah. Two weeks thereafter, Mohammad al-Kurd died from a stress induced heart attack.

Currently, the Hannoun and the al-Ghawe families face eviction from their Sheikh Jarrah homes. However, all 28 families are battling eviction in Israeli court.

Settlers take over a Palestinian house in Sheikh Jarrah

Israeli Coalition Against House Demolitions (ICAHD)

27 July 2009

On July 26th a group of settlers led by Arie king took over a Palestinian house in Sheikh Jarrah to which they where given custody of in a very controversial decision of the Israeli court. While trying to prevent the settlers from taking over the house and demolishing it, 11 activists (three Palestinians, seven internationals and one Israeli) where arrested.

At about 11:30, with the support of police and army units, settlers came to demolish a home whose owner passed away recently. This is part of the settler organization’s larger campaign to dispose Palestinians of their land and to settle Jews in the East Jerusalem neighborhood, especially in the holy basin – the area which surrounds the old city of Jerusalem.

Activists at the scene attempted to non-violently prevent the entrance of the settler bulldozer into the home, an effort that was met with unrelenting force by the police and army, and ended with the violent arrest of the 11 activists. The activists were held and interrogated at Salah-Adin police station in Sheikh Jarrah, and 8 of them were transferred to the Russian compound and held overnight.

Currently, 28 families face eviction in the East Jerusalem neighborhood, and others have already been evicted and settlers now occupy their houses. Sheikh Jarrah is a Palestinian neighborhood, and the continued efforts by settlers to move Jews there is yet another way of creating “facts on the ground” and preventing any real, just solution from being reached in the future.

Relevant Links:

http://www.standupforjerusalem.org/index.php?action=innerp&id=4

A demonstration will be held outside the demolished Darwish Hijazi home in Sheikh Jarrah

UPDATE: All activists were given a condition to stay out of East Jerusalem for 3 weeks and will be released later today.

For Immediate Release:

4pm, Monday 27 July 2009: A demonstration will be held outside the Darwish Hijazi home to protest the demolition of the home and the ethnic cleansing of occupied East Jerusalem.

Palestinian residents of Sheikh Jarrah, along with international and Israeli solidarity activists, will hold a demonstration outside the Darwish Hijazi home in Sheikh Jarrah. On Sunday, 26 July 2009, 7 international activists, 1 Israeli activist and 2 Palestinians were arrested outside the Palestinian home.

Settlers had broken into the home and began to destroy the house from the inside. According to local residents, the Palestinian home owner had died a month ago, leaving no one inside the home to protect it. Around 12:30 pm, Israeli forces arrested a German national, an Australian national, a Scottish national, an Israeli and 2 Palestinians including former Minister of Jerusalem Affairs Hatim Abdul Qader, when they tried to block settlers from entering the home.

After they were taken to the police station on Salah al-Din street, settlers were able to enter the home. According to witnesses at the scene, settlers were destroying the house from the inside.

Around 3:30, Israeli forces arrested 2 American nationals and a British national, as they tried to enter the Palestinian home to stop the settlers from destroying it. They were also taken to the police station on Salah al-Din street.

The 7 internationals and 1 Israeli activist are still in detention and will likely have court on the morning of Monday, 27 July 2009.

The case of Sheikh Jarrah

Currently, the Hannoun and the al-Ghawe families face eviction from their Sheikh Jarrah homes. However, all 28 families are battling eviction in Israeli court.

Settlers occupy and damage Sheikh Jarrah home

Ma’an News

26 July 2009

Residents on Sunday tried unsuccessfully to prevent Israeli settlers and police from reaching a home owned by Palestinians in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem.

During the incident former Minister of Jerusalem Affairs Hatim Abdul Qader was detained, apparently while trying to block more attacks on a home that had earlier been ransacked by a group of rightist settlers.

The former minister had not been released by early afternoon on Sunday. Abdul Qader resigned his post earlier this month, but remains in charge of Jerusalem affairs within the Fatah movement.

Another Palestinian and eight foreign solidarity activists were also detained by Israeli forces operating in the area when, according to Ma’an’s correspondent, they tried to prevent settlers and police from occupying the home of Darwish Hijazi.

A number of local residents reportedly sat on the road leading to the home in an effort to stop Israeli bulldozers moving near the house, and Israeli policy attacks and injured several protesters, according to witnesses.

Dimitri Diliani, spokesman for Fatah in Jerusalem, and Abdul Qader were quoted as saying that residents were adamant about preventing settlers from occupying the Hijazi home.

Diliani added that dozens of Fatah activists had meanwhile managed to expel a group of settlers from a nearby piece of land, while Israeli police nonetheless brought backup forces and threatened to arrest protesters who refused to leave the area.

The arrests came just 48 hours after Abdul Qader warned on Friday that Israel risks provoking a new upheaval if it continues destroying Palestinian houses in East Jerusalem.

“After the incident of opening the tunnel in 1996 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Natanyahu said that ‘no one warned me of the consequences of opening the tunnel and if I received a warning then I would not have done it,'” he said, referencing riots that cost 70 Palestinians and 17 Israeli soldiers their lives after the opening of the Western Wall tunnels.

“We are warning [Netanyahu] now of the consequences of the demolitions, because the consequences will surpass those of opening the tunnel in Jerusalem,” Abdul Qader said.

Abdul Qader made his remarks alongside hundreds of residents of the Bustan neighborhood in East Jerusalem’s Silwan area. Some 88 houses on the sliver of land near the Old City are slated for demolition because they were built without permits from the Israeli municipal authorities. But some of the structures were built before Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967.

The official alleged that Israeli authorities in Jerusalem are enabling settler groups to take control of Palestinian neighborhoods.

Campaigners for evicted Palestinians call on Barack Obama to intervene

Rachel Shabi | The Guardian

20 July 2009

Campaigners protesting at the eviction of two Palestinian families from their homes in East Jerusalem to make way for a Jewish development today appealed to President Barack Obama to stop the settlement going ahead.

The families, who have lived in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood north of the Old City, were given until last Sunday by an Israeli court to leave their homes, and now face fines, arrests and eviction. The decision affects 55 people, including 14 children.

The families say that, as refugees from the 1948 war, they were given the houses in 1956 by the UN’s refugee agency and the Jordanian government, which controlled the area until 1967.

But the Israeli court upheld a prior claim to the land by the Sephardi Community Committee, which subsequently sold the rights to an Israeli construction company with reported US investment ties.

“They have the power and we could be evicted or arrested at any time,” says Maher Hannoun, head of one of the families at Sheikh Jarrah. “But I will never run away from my house. It is my job to protest my house and my children.”

Nahalot Shimon International, the company that the court decreed current owner of the site, has plans to build a new 200-unit settlement in the area – which would affect a further 20 or so Palestinian families.

“My children keep asking me, ‘Daddy are we going to live in a tent?’ What do I tell them? I tell them I have hope that it won’t happen,” says Hannoun, a 51-year-old salesman whose family is from Haifa, now in Israel, and Nablus, in the occupied West Bank.

The neighbourhood is close to the site of the Shepherd Hotel, where the US recently demanded that Israeli halt a construction project. Building has not yet commenced at the site of the old, disused hotel – a vast stone building and sprawling terrace, once owned by the grand mufti of Jerusalem and bought by the American millionaire Irving Moskowitz in 1985.

Yesterday, the Guardian revealed that 80-year-old Moskowitz is funding many illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

East Jerusalem was annexed by Israel after the 1967 war – a move not recognised by the international community. Israel maintains the Jewish right to reside in any part of Jerusalem.

“It is not about the Jewish right to live in East Jerusalem,” says Meir Margalit, a Meretz party member of Jerusalem city council. “But about settlers who have come with a dangerous political agenda to ‘Israelise’ the area, change the demographic and in that way undermine any kind of political solution in the future.”