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<font size="1"><a href="http://english.pnn.ps/2021/05/27/sheikh-jarrah-and-silwan-ongoing-nakba-and-israeli-dispossession-of-palestinians/">http://english.pnn.ps/2021/05/27/sheikh-jarrah-and-silwan-ongoing-nakba-and-israeli-dispossession-of-palestinians/</a>
</font><h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan: Ongoing Nakba and Israeli Dispossession of Palestinians <br></h1>
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<div class="gmail-reader-estimated-time">May 28, 2021<br></div>
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<p>Jerusalem/PNN/</p>
<p>On 21 May 2021, a ceasefire announced the ending of Israel’s 11-day
military offensive on the Gaza Strip, which resulted in the killing of
at least 248 Palestinians, including 66 children, the demolition of
thousands of Palestinian houses, and the displacement of some 72,000
Palestinians. However, the ceasefire did not end Israel’s
institutionalised regime of racial oppression, domination and
dispossession, embedded in its settler-colonial and apartheid regime
over the Palestinian people as a whole.</p>
<p>The Israeli dispossession of Palestinians takes various forms,
implemented through discriminatory laws and policies, all at the expense
of Palestinians. Palestinian families from the Sheikh Jarrah and Batn
Al-Hawa neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem, for example, are still under
the imminent threat of being forcibly transferred, after settler
organisations filed cases against them in the Israeli courts.</p>
<p>Occupying and illegally annexing East Jerusalem in 1967, Israel
unlawfully extended the application of its own domestic legislation to
the territory it occupies, further displacing Palestinians and
appropriating their property. To cement Palestinian dispossession and
displacement in East Jerusalem, Israel enacted the Legal and
Administrative Matters Law in 1970, which exclusively allows Jews to
pursue claims to land and property allegedly owned by Jews in East
Jerusalem before the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.</p>
<p>In Sheikh Jarrah, eight families of 19 household of 87 Palestinians,
are at imminent risk of forcible transfer, due to the separate case
filed against them before Israeli courts by the settler organisation
Nahalat Shimon International. Alarmingly, Nahalat Shimon International
has previously evicted three Palestinian families of around 67
Palestinians from the aforementioned neighbourhood in 2008 and 2009.</p>
<p>The Israeli Supreme Court was supposed to hold a hearing on 10 May
2021 on the forced eviction of eight Palestinian families living in
Sheikh Jarrah, but it was postponed. Waiting for the Court’s decision,
residents of Sheikh Jarrah have been leading a campaign, raising
awareness about the situation, and calling for solidarity activities in
support of their struggle and in resistance to Israel’s oppression.
These efforts have been met with further oppression, as the Israeli
Occupying Forces (IOF) and Israeli settlers, some of the latter being
armed, have been suppressing and attacking Palestinians in Sheikh
Jarrah, including by raiding and damaging houses, firing tear gas
canisters, sound bombs and skunk water, and arbitrarily arresting them.</p>
<p>Since 7 May 2021, the IOF fully closed the entrances of the
neighbourhood, with metal barriers, only allowing Palestinian residents
of Sheikh Jarrah to enter. On 16 May 2021, the IOF closed the
neighbourhood with cement blocks. The IOF would stop Palestinians and
ask for their IDs. Only residents of the neighbourhood are allowed
access. Notably, these restrictions did not affect Israeli settlers, as
they can access the neighbourhood freely, even if they do not reside in
the neighbourhood. Palestinians continued to show up in support at the
entrances of the neighbourhood, and they continued to be suppressed and
targeted by the IOF.</p>
<p>In a similar context, today, 26 May 2021, the Jerusalem District
Court held a hearing on the forced eviction of some 108 Palestinians of
18 households from their homes in Batn Al-Hawa neighbourhood in Silwan,
occupied East Jerusalem. The Court postponed its ruling.</p>
<p>Premising their claim on a property deed from the Ottoman rule
period, the Benvenisti Trust, a Jewish Trust, claims ownership of 5.2
dunums of Batn Al-Hawa land. In 2002, the Custodian General transferred
the land to the Benvenisti Trust, whose management is in the hands of
the settler organisation Ateret Cohanim. The decision was sanctioned by
the Jerusalem District Court, and the transfer was done without
informing the Palestinian residents who have lived on the land since the
1950s, and who have contracts proving so.</p>
<p>Since then, Ateret Cohanim has filed ‘eviction orders’ against the
Palestinian families. In 2017, the Palestinian residents filed a
petition with the Israeli High Court to contest the evictions, arguing
that, and according to the Ottoman law applied at the time, the
ownership applies only to the buildings, which do not exist anymore, but
not the land itself. In June 2018 the Israeli government acknowledged
that the Israeli Custodian General’s transfer of the land to the
Benvenisti Trust was done without investigating the nature of the Trust,
the Ottoman laws, or the existing buildings. Yet, the Israeli High
Court rejected the appeals of the families, paving the way for the
settler group Ateret Cohanim to continue legal proceedings to evict 81
Palestinian families, numbering approximately 436 Palestinians.</p>
<p>Most of the families living in Sheikh Jarrah and Batn Al-Hawa
neighbourhoods, who are facing the threat of forced eviction, are
refugees, who have been denied their right of return and to reclaim
their original land and properties. What is happening in Sheikh Jarrah
and Batn Al-Hawa exemplifies the overarching and the overall context of
Palestine of Israel’s maintenance and expansion of its settler-colonial
and apartheid regime.</p>
<p>Al-Haq reminds that the legal framework applicable in occupied East
Jerusalem is international humanitarian and international human rights
law. Israel is specifically prohibited from annexing the occupied
territory under Article 47 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. As such,
Israel’s application of its domestic law, including the Legal and
Administrative Matters Law in 1970, and provisions of Israel Tenancy law
are not only wrongful acts in violation of international law, of which
there can be no recognition, but acts which third States must
collectively work to bring to an end.</p>
<p>There are clear obligations under Article 43 of the Hague
Regulations, to continue the status quo ante belly including the
preservation of private tenancy rights, which are further protected as
the private property of the civilian population under Article 46 of the
Hague Regulations.</p>
<p>In particular, such acts amount to forcible transfer, grave breaches
of the Geneva Conventions, and war crimes and crimes against humanity
within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.</p>
<p>Al-Haq reaffirms the urgent need for the international community to
address the root causes of prolonged denial of Palestinian rights, and
long-practised Israeli violations, and stresses the need for the Office
of the Prosecutor to publicly condemn the imminent forced evictions of
Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah and Batn Al-Hawa neighbourhoods, urgently
investigate this case within the Situation of Palestine and intervene to
forestall the displacement of these Palestinian families from their
homes.</p>
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