Developereo
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Palestinians fear strategic divide
Jason Koutsoukis, Jerusalem
August 8, 2009
THE evictions of two Palestinian families from their homes in the occupied East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah by Israeli police this week sparked a wave of international condemnation.
The European Union condemned the evictions as illegal, while United Nations special co-ordinator Robert Serry said the actions violated the Geneva Conventions and Israel's obligations under the road map plan for peace.
The US State Department summoned Israel's ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren, for the second time in as many weeks to express its strong disapproval.
But with eviction notices already served on two-thirds of the other 25 families still living in the area, Palestinians fear that without international intervention, the neighbourhoods of Sheikh Jarrah and Wadi al-Joz will be sliced in two, as Jewish settlers move into the area forming a line of housing that will stretch all the way up Mount Scopus.
Umm Kamel al-Kord, 78, who was evicted from her home in Sheikh Jarrah last November, says: ''The pattern is clear: to force all of us out of here, to divide our neighbourhood in the most strategic way possible and to stop Palestinians from living together.''
Not far from Mrs Kord's former home is the Shepherd Hotel, a dilapidated four-storey building that was taken over by Israel's Custodian of Absentee Property after the 1967 Six-Day War. Last month, Israeli planning authorities revealed that they had approved plans for Jewish-American businessman Irving Moskowitz to turn the building into 20 apartments.
Just north of the Old City of Jerusalem, Sheikh Jarrah is dominated by a hill that is home to some of Jerusalem's blue-blooded Palestinian families, including the Husseini and Nashashibi clans.
Their pink stone mansions look on to a valley known to Jews as Shimon HaTzadik, which takes its name from the tomb of Simon the Just, a Jewish high priest in 300BC, which is located there. Some of the land around the tomb was bought by a number of Jewish families in the early 1900s. They lived there until the 1948 Arab-Israeli war made them refugees and drove them to the Israeli side of the armistice line.
In 1956, the UN and the Jordanian government allowed 28 Palestinian families to move into those homes that had been left vacant, just as many Jews moved into the thousands of homes left behind in Israel by fleeing Palestinian refugees.
But after Israel's controversial annexation of East Jerusalem following the Six-Day War, several Jewish activist groups began a campaign to regain ownership of the land around the tomb, with homes belonging to the Gawi and Hanoun families serving as test cases.
The case stretched across four decades, but Israel's High Court eventually decided in favour of the Jewish activists and ordered the Palestinian families out.
''My family were refugees in 1948,'' says Nasser al-Gawi, 46, who is now camped on the footpath outside the buildings that have been his home his entire life. ''Israeli law makes it illegal for us to go back to our home, and it is virtually impossible for us to buy land there even if we wanted to do it. But the Jewish law allows people to come back here and get back land they say they owned.
''This is the apartheid system. One law for them, another law for us.''
Across the street, some of the teenagers who have taken over Mr Gawi's home come to the gate.
With chicken rolls in their hands, the teenagers make obscene hand gestures to the Gawi family as they eat. One of them carries a flag with the name ''Kahane'' printed on it, a reference to the assassinated Rabbi Meir Kahane, whose political party Kach was outlawed by Israel as a terrorist and racist organisation.
''We understand English, but we will not talk to you. Go away,'' one of the teenagers says. ''You should tell them to go away too,'' he adds, pointing to the family camping across the street. ''This is our house now. It's all over. They should go.''
Jason Koutsoukis, Jerusalem
August 8, 2009
THE evictions of two Palestinian families from their homes in the occupied East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah by Israeli police this week sparked a wave of international condemnation.
The European Union condemned the evictions as illegal, while United Nations special co-ordinator Robert Serry said the actions violated the Geneva Conventions and Israel's obligations under the road map plan for peace.
The US State Department summoned Israel's ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren, for the second time in as many weeks to express its strong disapproval.
But with eviction notices already served on two-thirds of the other 25 families still living in the area, Palestinians fear that without international intervention, the neighbourhoods of Sheikh Jarrah and Wadi al-Joz will be sliced in two, as Jewish settlers move into the area forming a line of housing that will stretch all the way up Mount Scopus.
Umm Kamel al-Kord, 78, who was evicted from her home in Sheikh Jarrah last November, says: ''The pattern is clear: to force all of us out of here, to divide our neighbourhood in the most strategic way possible and to stop Palestinians from living together.''
Not far from Mrs Kord's former home is the Shepherd Hotel, a dilapidated four-storey building that was taken over by Israel's Custodian of Absentee Property after the 1967 Six-Day War. Last month, Israeli planning authorities revealed that they had approved plans for Jewish-American businessman Irving Moskowitz to turn the building into 20 apartments.
Just north of the Old City of Jerusalem, Sheikh Jarrah is dominated by a hill that is home to some of Jerusalem's blue-blooded Palestinian families, including the Husseini and Nashashibi clans.
Their pink stone mansions look on to a valley known to Jews as Shimon HaTzadik, which takes its name from the tomb of Simon the Just, a Jewish high priest in 300BC, which is located there. Some of the land around the tomb was bought by a number of Jewish families in the early 1900s. They lived there until the 1948 Arab-Israeli war made them refugees and drove them to the Israeli side of the armistice line.
In 1956, the UN and the Jordanian government allowed 28 Palestinian families to move into those homes that had been left vacant, just as many Jews moved into the thousands of homes left behind in Israel by fleeing Palestinian refugees.
But after Israel's controversial annexation of East Jerusalem following the Six-Day War, several Jewish activist groups began a campaign to regain ownership of the land around the tomb, with homes belonging to the Gawi and Hanoun families serving as test cases.
The case stretched across four decades, but Israel's High Court eventually decided in favour of the Jewish activists and ordered the Palestinian families out.
''My family were refugees in 1948,'' says Nasser al-Gawi, 46, who is now camped on the footpath outside the buildings that have been his home his entire life. ''Israeli law makes it illegal for us to go back to our home, and it is virtually impossible for us to buy land there even if we wanted to do it. But the Jewish law allows people to come back here and get back land they say they owned.
''This is the apartheid system. One law for them, another law for us.''
Across the street, some of the teenagers who have taken over Mr Gawi's home come to the gate.
With chicken rolls in their hands, the teenagers make obscene hand gestures to the Gawi family as they eat. One of them carries a flag with the name ''Kahane'' printed on it, a reference to the assassinated Rabbi Meir Kahane, whose political party Kach was outlawed by Israel as a terrorist and racist organisation.
''We understand English, but we will not talk to you. Go away,'' one of the teenagers says. ''You should tell them to go away too,'' he adds, pointing to the family camping across the street. ''This is our house now. It's all over. They should go.''
