ISRAELI SETTLERS TO FORCE FAMILY FROM HOME OF 50 YEARS
▶ Occupiers use legal system against Palestinians to claim properties where they say Jews once lived
It was time for evening prayers in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, and Mohammed Shamasneh led relatives and neighbours through the prostrations, his forehead touching a carpet he had unfurled on the street outside his home.
But it now seems that it will not be his home for long. Mr Shamasneh, 45, his four children and his parents, Ayoub, 84 and mother Fahima, 76, are to be evicted from the house in which they have lived for more than 50 years.
Their fate is a stark illustration of how settlers are using the Israeli legal system to change a neighbourhood to suit their own ends.
The Shamasneh family live in an area the settlers call Shimon Hatzadik after a Jewish high priest whose burial site is near by.
It is a pivotal area north of the walled old city, and the fate of the Shamasnehs marks another success in the settlers’ campaign to change its character, and in doing so deal another blow to any chance of a peaceful solution in which occupied East Jerusalem emerges as the capital of an independent Palestinian state.
The Shamasnehs have lived in their two-bedroom house since 1964, three years before Israel captured the area from Jordan in the 1967 war.
In 2013, the Israeli supreme court upheld lower court rulings that effectively gave the property to right-wing settler group the Israel Land Fund, on the grounds that it was Jewish-owned before Jordan’s capture of East Jerusalem in 1948.
The fund had the co-operation of the heir of the original Jewish owners and took the lead in the legal proceedings, which began in 2009.
Sitting on a plastic chair near signs that say “No to Occupation” and “Sheikh Jarrah is Palestine”, Mr Shamasneh, a gardener, responded sharply when asked what the family would do when evicted.
“That’s a question you have to ask the government, which is throwing out onto the street a family with two elderly people. In the meantime, we aren’t thinking about another place. We don’t have a replacement.
“The feeling is absolutely awful. My parents are taking it the hardest. They were here for decades. They say there is no justice in this country. If it was a Jewish elderly couple, would they do this to them?”
Seven years ago, there were three such evictions in Sheikh Jarrah but after protests and an international outcry, including condemnation from then US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, the practice was suspended.
Palestinians and moderate Israelis said it was unjust for the Israeli legal system to allow Jews to retrieve pre-1948 properties in East Jerusalem while barring Palestinians from regaining their old properties in West Jerusalem.
Eyal Raz, one of a group of Israeli activists helping the Shamasneh family, said the fear is that their eviction – the order for which came last month and now seems inevitable – could be the first of many.
The Israeli government feels unassailable when it comes to settlements, Mr Raz said, partly because the US government was willing to indulge it.
A local planning committee recently gave preliminary approval for construction of a settler home on a site near the Shamasneh home. The building that stands there houses 70 Palestinians.
Mr Shamasneh does not know exactly when the eviction will happen but expects it to be soon. It was set for August 9, but his lawyer managed to delay it pending a court hearing today. A reversal of the decision, however, is highly unlikely because the high court has issued its verdict, he said.
“The eviction is a foregone conclusion,” said Danny Seidemann, head of the Israeli non-government organisation Terrestrial Jerusalem, which monitors Israeli practices in East Jerusalem.
Inside the house, the peeling walls of which are adorned with Quranic inscriptions and a picture of the Kaaba in Mecca, Ayoub Shamasneh, who suffers from swollen feet and high blood pressure, was distraught. He said the eviction showed a lack of mercy and was unjust.
“The Jews don’t own one centimetre of Palestine,” Mr Shamasneh said.
Settler leader Arieh King, who is head of the Israel Land Fund and a Jerusalem city councillor, disagreed.
“This property belongs to Jews,” he said. “There is no reason why Jewish people who own property in East Jerusalem including in Shimon Hatzadik should not be allowed to live in their property.
“The local court, the district court and the supreme court all told them to leave. Everything we do, we do through the legal system. And we succeed.”
Mr King said his group would continue its legal battles to gain evictions of Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah.
“At the end of our plans we will get to have 400 Jewish families living in this area,” he said. “Today there are 26, but in 10 to 15 years it will be 400. Of course we are in the middle of court hearings to reclaim more property.”
He said his group had secured another three eviction orders in the same area as the Shamasneh home.
Asked whether he thinks Arabs should have to leave all of the East Jerusalem neighbourhoods, Mr King replied: “If you ask me, the best way to have peace is for them to leave.
“But it’s not practical and I need to deal with what is realistic. Do I want it? I do, but I think it’s a very small chance that it will happen.”
We will get to have 400 Jewish families in this area. Today there are 26, but in 10 to 15 years it will be 400