B'Tselem - East Jerusalem - 2 Aug. '09: Two Palestinian families evicted from Sheikh Jarah; settlers move into their homes:
"On 2 August 2009, the police evicted two Palestinian families from their houses in the Sheikh Jarah neighborhood of East Jerusalem : the extended Hanun family, 17 members who lived in three apartments, and the extended Alghawi family, 29 members who lived in six apartments. Immediately following the eviction, settler families took over the houses under heavy police guard. The evicted families refuse to be removed from the neighborhood and have stayed in the street since then.
The two families are the descendents of refugee families from 1948, the Hanun family from Haifa , and the Alghawi family from Sarfarand (Tzrifin). These families were part of a group of 28 families, which now amount to 550 persons, who were settled in the neighborhood in 1956 by the Jordanian government and UNRWA.
The eviction followed the Israeli Supreme Court's determination that the families were living in property belonging to the Jewish community that lived close to the tomb of Simon the Just until the 1930s. This property is registered to the name of the Sephardic Community Committee and the Knesset Israel Committee. These committees transferred their rights in the land to the Nahalat Shimon settlers' organization, which has been engaged over the past decade in evacuating Palestinian families in the neighborhood from their homes, and holds five other compounds in the neighborhood.
After the Palestinian residents are removed from the area around the tomb of Simon the Just, the Nahalat Shimon organization plans to build a 200-apartment Jewish neighborhood on the site. This plan complements other plans of settler organizations Elad and Ateret Cohanim, which are supported by government ministries and governmental authorities, to surround the historical basin around the Old City with compounds controlled by settler organizations. The state funds the guarding of the compounds in which the settlers live and allocates security forces that enable the taking over of Palestinian properties.
Settler organizations are also seeking to advance two other plans in Sheikh Jarah. The first is the project involving the Shepherd Hotel, a property owned by Irving Moskowitz. Recently, the Jerusalem Municipality approved a request to renovate the hotel, turning it into a 20 apartment building. There is also a plan, not yet approved, for the site that includes 90 apartments, a synagogue, a nursery school, and day-care centers. The second plan is in the Mufti's Vineyard (the al-Husseini Vineyard), which the Israel Lands Administration has leased to Ateret Cohanim.
Another part of the settlers' plan to gain control of the area, under government auspices, was the appointment of the Elad organization to operate the Ir David Archeological Garden in Silwan, and the organizations' involvement in operating the Tzurim Valley National Garden , which is situated east of Sheikh Jarah and encircles the Old City from the east. In this context, the Jerusalem Municipality has begun planning the King's Valley Archeological Garden on area on which Palestinian houses stand in the al-Bustan section of Silwan, south of the Old City , near the Elad settler compounds in Silwan.
The implementation of these plans, with government support, is especially grave given the government's discriminatory planning policy in East Jerusalem , which stifles any possibility of building and development for the Palestinian population. If they are indeed realized, the result will increase the physical isolation of East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank and will intensify the harm to the Palestinian population.
Sharihan Majd Hanun, a psychology student at Al-Quds University, described the evacuation of her family from their home:"
Filmed by Kareeem Jubran, B'Tselem, 2 Aug. '09.
Palestine Video - A Palestine Vlog
Sunday, August 9, 2009
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Selected Videos
- ***Alnakba [The Catastrophe] - [P1] The Threads of the Conspiracy [P2] Crushing the Revolution
- ***Alnakba [The Catastrophe] - [P3] Ethnic Cleansing [P4] Nakba Continued
- **Al Nakba [La Catástrofe] - [P1] Los Hilos de la Conspiración [P2] Aplastar la Revoución
- **AlNakba [La Catásrofe] - [P3] Limpieza Étnica
- *A Palestinian Woman
- *Azmi Bishara - Interview:
- *Azmi Bishara on Israeli Apartheid
- *Azmi Bishara: The Last Colonial Question
- *Blood & Religion, Unmasking the Israeli State
- *De Facto State of Lawlessness
- *Drying up Palestine
- *Edward Said - On Orientalism
- *Edward Said: Lecture The Myth of 'The Clash of Civilzations'
- *Edward Said: Memory, Inequality and Power: Palestine and the Universality of Human Rights
- *Edward Said: Palestine, Iraq and U.S. Policy
- *Francis Boyle - Palestinians and International law
- *From Occupation to Enclosure: Fragmenting the Palestinian State 1 - Diana Buttu"
- *From Occupation to Enclosure: Fragmenting the Palestinian State 2 - Amira Hass"
- *George Bisharat - Ending the Palestinian Nakba
- *Ghada Karmi at Yale
- *Ghada Karmi: Why Israel is a Failed State
- *Ilan Pappe - Interview
- *Ilan Pappe - Israel's 1967 Plan for the West Bank and Gaza Strip
- *Ilan Pappe on the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
- *In the Spider's Web
- *Interview: Ghassan Andoni
- *Israel's Secret Weapon (Israel's WMD)
- *Jeff Halper - Israeli Apartheid and the Paths to a Just Peace
- *Jeff Halper- The United States, Israel and the American Jewish Community
- *Jenin Jenin
- *John Pilger - Palestine is still the issue
- *John Pilger - The War on Democracy
- *Landscapes of Occupation in Palestine
- *Muhammad Jaradat & Eitan Bronstein: 1948 and the Right of Return
- *Noam Chomsky - Middle East Crisis
- *Noam Chomsky on Gaza - MIT
- *Norman Fikelstein - The Israel-Palestine conflict: what we can learn from Gandhi
- *Norman Finkelstein speech at Columbia University (3 parts video)
- *Occupation 101
- *Off The Charts - If Americans Knew
- *Palestine Street -1- The Lost Bride
- *Palestine Street -2- The Bride in exile
- *Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land: Media & the Israel-Palestine Conflict
- *People and The Land: The Story of a People Under Occupation
- *Phyllis Bennis - "Dual Occupations: Iraq and Palestine in Bush's Empire"
- *Rachel: An American Conscience
- *Rashid Khalidi - Palestine: 40 Years of Occupation, 60 Years of Dispossession
- *Rep. Paul Findley Dares to Speak Out -- Again! AIPAC exposed
- *Salman Abu Sitta: Atlas Palestine
- *Salman Abu Sitta: The Geography of Occupation
- *Secret WMD in Israel
- *Technical Error at Beit Hanoun
- *Tegenlicht ('Backlight') A Documentary on the Israel Lobby -
- *The Bases Are Loaded: US Permanent Military Presence in Iraq
- *The Easiest Targets: The Israeli Policy of Strip Searching Women and Children
- *The influence of the Israel Lobby on American foreign policy
- *The Iron Wall
- *The Israeli Wall in Palestinian Lands
- *The Killing Zone
- *The Unrecognized
- *This is Not Your War
- *Wall of Shame
- Watch "If Americans Knew" Videos
- Watch Alternate Focus Videos
- Watch B'Tselem Videos
- watch ISM Videos
- Watch pdxjustice Videos
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