[News] 14 Palestinian and Regional Organizations Send Joint Urgent Appeal to UN on Forced Evictions in East Jerusalem

[Anti-Imperialist News]

14 Palestinian and Regional Organisations Send Joint Urgent Appeal to UN 
Special Procedures on Forced Evictions in East Jerusalem
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  *14 Palestinian and Regional Organisations Send Joint Urgent Appeal to
  UN Special Procedures on*� *Forced Evictions in East Jerusalem*

16، Mar 2021

On 10 March 2021, the Palestinian Human Rights Organization Council, 
compromising of 11 Palestinian human rights organisations, the Civic 
Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem, the Community Action 
Center (Al-Quds University), and Cairo Institute for Human Rights 
Studies sent a joint urgent appeal to the United Nations (UN) Special 
Procedures on forced evictions in East Jerusalem. Addressing six UN 
Special Rapporteurs, including the Special Rapporteur on the situation 
of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, the 
organisations highlight forced evictions as part of Israel’s coercive 
environment in East Jerusalem, through which it maintains its 
institutionalised regime of racial domination and oppression over the 
Palestinian people.�

The appeal highlights how 15 Jerusalemite families totalling 37 
households of around 195 Palestinians, residing in Karm Al-Ja’ouni 
area in Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood and Batn Al-Hawa neighbourhood in 
Silwan, are currently at imminent risk of forced eviction. Unlawfully 
applying Israeli domestic law to occupied territory, Israeli courts have 
ruled in favour of lawsuits undertaken by settler organisations to evict 
the 15 Palestinian families.�

Acknowledging that most of the families living in Karm Al-Ja’ouni area 
and Batn Al-Hawa neighbourhood are refugees, the joint appeal outlines 
how Israel has ensured the maintenance of its apartheid regime over the 
Palestinian people through its policies and practices, such as the 
strategic fragmentation of the Palestinian people, including by denying 
Palestinian refugees and other persons displaced their inalienable right 
to return, and the appropriation of their homes, lands and property, 
coupled with the creation of a coercive environment designed to drive 
the ongoing transfer of Palestinians particularly in East Jerusalem.

Not only has Israel unlawfully extended its domestic civil legal system 
to occupied East Jerusalem, but it further proceeded to enact more 
discriminatory laws and policies that ensure the expansion of 
Israeli-Jewish presence in the city. In 1970, Israel enacted the Legal 
and Administrative Matters Law, which exclusively allows Israeli Jews to 
pursue claims to land and property ownership allegedly owned by Jews in 
East Jerusalem before the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. 
The appeal outlines how the 1970 discriminatory Law has facilitated the 
eviction orders by Israeli courts in favour of the settler organisations 
Nahalat Shimon International and Ataret Cohanim in Karm Al-Ja’ouni in 
Sheikh Jarrah and in Batn Al-Hawa in Silwan, respectively.�

At a time when people around the world are trying to survive the global 
pandemic, Palestinians in East Jerusalem continue to endure an 
ongoing Nakba, as they continue to be denied their inalienable right of 
return to their homes, properties, and lands, and to be under threat of 
further displacement and dispossession. They undergo a lengthy, 
exhausting, and unaffordable legal struggle to challenge the eviction 
lawsuits filed against them by settler organisations before Israeli 
courts. Given the discriminatory and untransparent nature of the Israeli 
legal system, they are effectively denied access to the rule of law. 
Many Palestinians have already been forcibly evicted under the same 
background.

The organisations stress that as the global pandemic continues, the 
Israeli apartheid regime intensifies its forcible transfer measures and 
policies in East Jerusalem. The institutionalised impunity enjoyed by 
Israel sustains the continuation of the gross violations perpetrated 
against the Palestinian people as a whole including the ongoing Nakba. 
As such, the appeal urges the mandate holders to:�

 1. Recognise and to declare that the laws and policies Israel have
    created, and continue to maintain, as an institutionalised regime of
    racial domination and oppression over the Palestinian people as a
    whole, which amounts to the crime of apartheid;

 2. Call on Israel to cease the unlawful application of its domestic
    laws and policies to illegally annexed East Jerusalem;

 3. Call on Israel to immediately cease the court proceedings against
    the 15 Palestinian families who are under imminent threat of forced
    eviction, as well as the eviction orders placing the Jerusalemite
    people at risk of forced displacement, and to ensure the return of
    Palestinians evicted to their properties as restitution or
    compensating them for their loss where this is not possible;

 4. Call on Israel to immediately repeal all laws it has enacted to
    further the Israeli policy of population transfer and achieve
    demographic goals in Jerusalem in violation of Palestinians’
    fundamental rights, including their right to self-determination and
    right to return and reclaim their properties, including 1950
    Absentees’ Property Law and the 1970 Legal and Administrative
    Matters Law;

 5. Call on Israel to abide by the legal test set by the UN Committee on
    Economic, Social and Cultural Rights if the eviction is
    exceptionally required;

 6. Call on the international community to cooperate to bring to an end,
    including through coercive measures such as sanctions, Israel’s
    occupation, colonisation, and apartheid regime, as well as the
    prolonged denial of the right to self-determination of the
    Palestinian people, and the right of return of Palestinian refugees
    to their homes, lands, and property, as mandated by international law;

 7. Call on the international community to ensure international justice
    and accountability, including by supporting a full, thorough, and
    comprehensive investigation into the Situation in Palestine by the
    International Criminal Court; and

 8. Call on the UN to ensure the fulfilment of various UN resolutions in
    relation to the inalienable right of Palestinian refugees to return
    to their homes and to restitution and compensation of their
    properties, as well as resolutions directed at altering the
    composition and character of Jerusalem.

Read the full urgent appeal 
<https://alhaq.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=10071401ba4201bc1a4992f68&id=3e3cd4a375&e=08c14cf485>

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