Save Sheikh Jarrah! The Palestinian Neighborhood Threatened with Eviction

posted on: Jun 25, 2021

By Ruqyah Sweidan, Arab America Contributing Writer

Sheikh Jarrah is A Palestinian neighborhood in northern Jerusalem. In 1956, the Jordanian government promised a transfer of official documents authenticating the community with Palestinian ownership. Yet, Israel retains control of the area, and it has recently announced that the Palestinian residents from 28 homes have until May to leave. In their place, Jewish settlers will live.

The residents of Sheikh Jarrah are calling on the United Nations Relief and Work Agency (UNRWA) and the international community to take diplomatic actions against this theft. The families of Sheikh Jarrah had already been displaced from the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Hence, they need to be protected from another dispossession and land theft.

Systemic Displacement

Fadi Hidmi, the Palestinian minister of Jerusalem affairs, has called on the international community to intervene. If they do not help to stop the evictions, then it is likely that the legal battles being launched to prevent the displacement will be defeated.

Although Palestinians live in East Jerusalem – a part of the internationally recognized Palestinian territory under Israeli military occupation since 1967 – they are denied citizenship rights. Instead, they are classified as residents. Their permits could even be revoked if they moved away from the city for more than a few years.

The Israeli settlements have actually been aimed at Sheikh Jarrah since the earlier 2000’s. At that time, one woman stood at the front lines. The late Amal Qassem brought the women of her neighborhood together to organize against the Israeli court-sanctioned takeovers. Today, her daughters carry on her grassroots work.

The evictions are driven by settler organizations in collusion with the Zionist courts in occupied Jerusalem. So far, they have officially ruled to expel seven families from their properties. Four families are ordered to leave their homes by May 2nd, 2021, and three at the start of August 2021.

Calls for Resistance

The official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that Hidmi had appealed for “urgent international intervention” to stop evictions in the Jerusalem neighborhoods of Sheikh Jarrah”.

“The international community is required to intervene immediately and urgently to put pressure on the Israeli government to stop the displacement of Palestinians from their homes in the occupied city, in light of the Israeli governmental and judicial institutions’ insistence on flouting international legitimacy decisions,” he said.

Neighboring Jordan does what it can to support Palestinians facing eviction every day. It has supplied legal representatives with documents of the Sheikh Jarrah tenants’ 1956 rental agreements with the UNRWA. Such materials are essential to debunk Israel’s claims of its rights to the neighborhood. Wasfi Kailani, executive director of the Hashemite Fund for the Restoration of Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, told Arab News that “steadfastness and courage” was required to challenge the replacement policy.

Jessica Montel, executive director of HaMoked, an Israeli human rights NGO working in Jerusalem, told Arab News that the Israeli courts are active partners in the forced displacement of entire families, with the explicit goal of replacing Palestinians with Israeli settlers. “The hypocrisy is quite blatant: Whereas Jews can reclaim property in East Jerusalem that they owned before 1948, the court has sealed off any option for Palestinians to reclaim property in West Jerusalem,” she said.

The Future of Sheikh Jarrah

This repetitive driving of Palestinians out of their homes is politically motivated. Every year since 1948, it has been the main tactic in implementing colonial settlement plans.  Dana Mills, director of development and external relations with the Israeli Peace Now organization pointed out that the Israeli government and settlers had no problem displacing thousands of Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah in the name of “the right of return” to properties before 1948, while they strongly claimed that the millions of Israelis living in Palestinian properties before 1948 could not be evicted.

The last time a deportation off this magnitude took place was in 1967. The Moghrabi (Moroccan) Quarter neighborhood was cleared for the expansion of the Western Wall. These endless assaults do not bring peace to anyone. Amal was a fearless warrior for justice in Sheikh Jarrah and beyond