[News] Israel destroys Sheikh Jarrah home in cruel and criminal act

[Anti-Imperialist News]

electronicintifada.net
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/israel-destroys-sheikh-jarrah-home-cruel-and-criminal-act>
Israel
destroys Sheikh Jarrah home in cruel and criminal act

Tamara Nassar <https://electronicintifada.net/people/tamara-nassar> - 19
January 2022
------------------------------
[image: Armed forces stand in field near rubble and Hyundai bulldozer]

Israeli Border Police stand near the rubble of the Salhiya home in the
occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah after demolishing it
on 19 January.
APA images

Israeli police demolished the home of the Salhiya family in the middle of
the night on Wednesday, in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of
Sheikh Jarrah.

Around 3:30 am, Israeli police raided
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-police-carries-out-arrests-during-sheikh-jarrah-overnight-eviction-1.10548825>
the home and forcibly removed the family and activists.

The police used stun grenades and arrested more than a dozen people before
razing the house to the ground.

“The family have no place to go,” the Norwegian Refugee Council said
<https://twitter.com/NRC_MiddleEast/status/1483726516328579090> of the
seven residents, including five children.

“Children’s physical and psychological well-being is now at risk, having
witnessed their home turn into rubble in the dark.”

“These cruel acts turn the Salhiyas into two-time refugees,” Human Rights
Watch said on Wednesday.

“This is what apartheid and persecution looks like. Perpetrators of these
crimes against humanity should be prosecuted and sanctioned.”

The Salhiya family originates from Ein Karem, a village west of Jerusalem.
They were ethnically cleansed from their homes during the Nakba, the 1948
expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians in order to establish Israel. They had
lived in the home Israel just destroyed for decades.

Israeli forces arrived
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/palestinians-fight-ongoing-ethnic-cleansing-sheikh-jarrah>
at the Salhiya home on Monday in an earlier attempt to demolish it, but
Mahmoud Salhiya and activists stayed on the roof while Salhiya threatened
to set himself and the house ablaze if the demolition went forward.

On that day, the Israeli army destroyed the family’s business, a plant
nursery.

European, British and Canadian diplomats staged
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/palestinians-fight-ongoing-ethnic-cleansing-sheikh-jarrah>
photo-ops near the Salhiya home on Monday to “bear witness” to what they
acknowledged was a violation of international law by Israel.

However, their theatrics and toothless protests did nothing to deter Israel
from coming back days later to complete the destruction.

Ir Amim, an Israeli group that monitors settlement activity in Jerusalem,
said Israeli authorities “were presented with multiple options” that would
allow the Salhiya family “to remain safely in their homes.”

But “they chose instead to cynically dispossess a Palestinian family.”
The family was in the process of appealing the case to Israel’s high court,
their attorney told
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-police-carries-out-arrests-during-sheikh-jarrah-overnight-eviction-1.10548825>
Tel Aviv daily *Haaretz*. Cynical excuse

Israel seized and destroyed the Salhiya home on the pretext that it is
needed to build a school for Palestinians.

The Israeli-occupation municipality claims
<https://www.jerusalem.muni.il/en/newsandarticles/municipality-news/disabled-education-in-the-east-jerusalem/>
the school will serve “hundreds of children with special needs from all
over East Jerusalem.”

The Israeli police even posted a video of the demolition, saying the
planned school would “benefit” the community.
But Ir Amim said there was a nearby plot of land that could have been used
to build a school.

However, Israel has allocated that land for a yeshiva – a Jewish religious
school – that will help consolidate the presence of Israeli settlers in
occupied East Jerusalem in violation of international law.

“Clearly the thought of building schools for Palestinians in place of a new
yeshiva in Sheikh Jarrah is inconceivable in the eyes of the Israeli
authorities,” Ir Amim added.

“They’d rather force a Palestinian family out of their homes to meet such
needs.”

The cynicism of the Israeli move is made even more transparent by how
Israel, the occupying power in East Jerusalem, has for decades neglected
education for Palestinians in the city, leading to a severe shortage of
classrooms
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/charlotte-silver/jerusalem-children-squeezed-out-school-israeli-discrimination>
.

Meanwhile, Israel has massively expanded its Jewish colonial settlements in
and around occupied East Jerusalem.

All of a sudden, Israel is interested in building schools for Palestinians,
but apparently the only place it could find to do so is over the ruins of a
Palestinian home.

Israeli authorities carried out the demolition using
<https://twitter.com/PalMissionUK/status/1483728959166631939> Hyundai
equipment, effectively contributing to a war crime, as it was called by
Human Rights Watch.

Palestinians have long called <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/hyundai>
on the South Korean conglomerate to halt the use of its equipment by Israel
in the commission of such crimes.
Under the cover of night

Israel chose to carry out the demolition in the middle of the night, when
there would be fewer cameras, reporters and activists present.

It was clearly an attempt to avoid a PR disaster.

After all, it was Israel’s efforts to force other families out of their
homes in Sheikh Jarrah last spring that escalated into a full-scale
confrontation with Palestinians, including Israel’s 11-day bombardment of
Gaza <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/may-2021-attack-gaza> in May.

Building a school is not a valid pretext for Israel violating international
law and making a Palestinian family homeless. But it is also impossible to
take the Israeli-controlled municipality at its word.

Once the land is in the hands of Israel, there is no telling what will be
done with it.

For decades, Israel has made promises of building housing and other
infrastructure for Palestinians, including Palestinian citizens of Israel,
only to break them.

At the same time it has accelerated colonization
<https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/05/12/israel-discriminatory-land-policies-hem-palestinians>
of the land exclusively for the benefit of Jews – a situation Palestinians
and human rights groups accurately describe as apartheid
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/apartheid>.

*Ali Abunimah contributed reporting.*
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