On Wednesday, January 19, Israel police has forcibly evicted a Palestinian family of 15 people from their home in Sheikh Jarrah, a controversial and predominantly Arab neighbourhood in East Jerusalem bordering the Old City and West Jerusalem. The latter is a neighbourhood situated in East Jerusalem and it has always been at the core of the Israel-Palestinian dispute.
The eviction, executed, according to the family, at dead of the night, around 3:00 a.m., by a dozen of heavily armed forces, came after a first attempt to remove the family carried out earlier in the week, on Monday.
On January 17, indeed, police had tried to evict the Salhiya family, but the operation resulted in clashes with protesters and a reached the highest level of tension when Mohammed Salhiya, the household, reached the roof carrying gas canisters threatening to set them off rather than let Israeli forces force the family out.
Israeli forces prevented activists, journalists, and UN workers from entering the area, located north of Jerusalem’s Old City, leaving the Salhiyas to face the eviction order alone.
After a 10-hour standoff, the police left the area and media reporters gathered around the place of the events. The head of the family spoke to them, reiterating that he and his family will not leave again, after being already expelled from their home in 1948. He is, indeed, married to a Jewish woman, Lital, and his family was expelled from Ein Karm village in West Jerusalem in 1948, and has lived in the area during Jordan rule, and has owned their land since before 1967.
The British Consulate-General, located nearby the Salhiya’s property, in the figures of Diana Corner, the consul-general, and other diplomats, was present at the event of 17 January, in order to “bear witness of the ongoing events”. Furthermore, the British Consulate had a say on the matter via a tweet, through which it defined such evictions in occupied territory as being against international humanitarian law, set aside exceptional cases and, in view of that, UK has urged the Government of Israel to cease such practices which only serve to increase tensions on the ground. Same concern has been expressed by European Union.
Despite the aforementioned recommendations from Western powers, just two days after, the eviction was successfully carried out with a nighttime raid by the Israeli armed forces, who – according to a Yasmiin Salhiya’s declaration in a social media post – repeatedly beat the members of the family, including her nine-year-old sister, before dragging them outside and demolishing their home with a bulldozer. The neighbourhood residents who witnessed the event, affirmed that police used rubber bullets and detained about 25 people, including five members of the family. The reasons for their arrest, expressed by police in a joint statement with Jerusalem municipality, were the suspicion of violating a court order and disturbing the peace.
Authorities declared that the 12 officers were enforcing a court-approved eviction order of “illegal buildings built on [public space] designated for a school for children with special needs … which can benefit the children of the entire Sheikh Jarrah community.” Israeli officials, to be specific, assume that the Salhiya’s property was illegal due to the fact that it has been built up on a land destined to a school, and, jointly with Jerusalem municipality, they state that the evacuation has been approved by all the courts in these last 23 years, including the Jerusalem District Court.
The family, however, who is yet facing the eviction’s threat since 2017, rejects such claim; their lawyer, Walid Abu Tayeh, declared the demolition illegal, as, according to him, the municipality had only received permission from the court to clear the property. Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, defined the demolition as a “war crime” and warned that the Israeli government “bears responsibility for its dangerous repercussions”. Human Rights Watch Israel and Palestine director Omar Shakir said the Salhiyas had been turned into “two-time refugees” because they were expelled from their home in the West Jerusalem neighbourhood of Ein Kerem during the war that followed Israel’s creation in 1948. Israeli activists as well opposed to the eviction, stressing the fact that a nearby plot, which remains empty, was previously destinated to the school and then given to an ultra-Orthodox Jewish organisation for a seminary.
Shortly thereafter, a member of Hamas, which had previously threatened to respond violently to any further evictions in Sheikh Jarrah, called for a new Palestinian uprising, as reported by Palestinian media.
The Sheikh Jarrah district is extremely controversial, as, for many Palestinians, the fight over it goes to the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Control of the area encompasses the wider issues of jurisdiction over Jerusalem, the rights of Palestinians living in Israeli-occupied territory, and the Palestinian right to return. On the other side, Israel, which occupied Eat Jerusalem from Jordan in 1967, and effectively annexed it in 1980 in a move not recognised internationally, regards the whole holy city as its capital.
Anyway, Palestinian leaders want East Jerusalem – which is inhabited around 350,000 Palestinians and 200,000 Jewish – to be the capital of a future Palestinian state, and the United Nations Security Council has deemed it occupied territory.
Sheikh Jarrah has been a significant flashpoint over the past year, after Israel tried to expel six Palestinian families from the area last May to make way for Israeli settlers. Clashes over evictions became an all-out war that lasted 11 long days and resulted in 254 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead. The events had led to widespread protests in the occupied West Bank and Israel’s mixed cities of Arabs and Jews, and a large-scale military operation in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Riots started on May 10, the day in which the Israel Supreme Court was supposed to judge over the Sheikh Jarrah. However, due to the disorders arising from both the celebration of the 28th day of the Hebrew month of Iyer by Israeli nationalists, who were planning to hold a controversial annual “Jerusalem Day” march through Muslim quarters of the Old City, stressing Israel’s capture of Jerusalem during the Six Day war in 1967 on the one hand, and the decision to ban traditional Ramadan gatherings in square beside Damascus Gate on the other, Jerusalem and, in general, Gaza Strip became the setting of violent clashes between Palestinians and police, that saw the involvement of Hamas firing the rocket barrage.
The court hearing on Sheikh Jarrah was ultimately delayed until August 2, 2021, when the Israel’s Supreme Court sent the case back to arbitration. That ruling stated that there would be no immediate evictions as the court has ruled that the two parties still need to iron out the details of the land’s ownership. The court, through its ruling, in other words, puts the legal dispute back in the hands of the two parties involved, namely Jewish and Palestinian; the developments of the case will be reviewed in a future not yet been specified.
Sources:
- “Israel evicts Palestinians in Flashpoint Area of East Jerusalem”, available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/19/world/middleeast/israel-palestine-jerusalem-eviction.html;
- “Palestinian threatens to burn Sheikh Jarrah home rather than be evicted”, available at: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/palestinian-threatens-burn-sheikh-jarrah-home-rather-than-be-evicted-2022-01-17/;
- “Palestinian family threatens to burn Sheikh Jarrah home in eviction standoff”, available at: https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20220117-palestinian-family-threatens-to-burn-sheikh-jarrah-home-in-eviction-standoff;
- “Israeli settlement ruling delayed as Jerusalem tensions run high”, available at:
- “Israeli police demolish Palestinian family’s Sheikh Jarrah home”, available at:
- “Sheikh Jarrah: Israeli police evict Palestinians from East Jerusalem home”, available at:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-60052131;
- “Sheikh Jarrah: Palestinian family threatens to burn home as Israel attempts expulsion”, available at: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/sheikh-jarrah-israel-forces-evict-palestinian-family-jerusalem;
- “Sheikh Jarrah: The story behind the story”, available at: https://jewishunpacked.com/sheikh-jarrah-the-story-behind-the-story/;
By The European Institute for International Law and International Relations.
