Jerusalem24 – Today, the Israeli Supreme Court is considering the petitions of 4 families from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood against the decisions to evict them from their homes in favor of settlers.
The families of Al-Kurd, Al-Qasim, Al-Jaouni, and Skafi submitted petitions to the court, after the Israeli District Court gave the green light to evict the families from their homes.
Local activists called for a sit-down in front of the courtroom today, in solidarity with families against the decisions to evict them from their homes.
Lawyer Hosni Abu Hussein, the lawyer for the families, told Al-Ayyam that the court will hear, today, the allegations of the parties.
It is not clear when the court will issue its decision.
Israeli sources suggested that the court would postpone its decision in light of the international follow-up and the international rejection of the eviction decisions.
A few days ago, the court postponed decisions to evict 3 other families in the neighborhood from their homes.
The families have lived in their homes since 1956, but settler groups claim that the homes were built on land that was owned by Jews before 1948, which the Palestinians deny.
The Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood witnesses confrontations between the occupation forces and its settlers, and between the residents of the neighborhood, the Jerusalemites, the youth and the solidarity activists, who confront the settlers’ incursions and attacks, and affirm their steadfastness and steadfastness in their homes and land.
In this regard, the documents submitted by the Jordanian authorities to Palestinian families threatened with eviction from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in the occupied city of Jerusalem confirmed that the Jordanian authorities actually worked to transfer the ownership of the lands and buildings built on them and threatened with eviction in Sheikh Jarrah, to the ownership of the Palestinian families, but the June 1967 war disrupted These actions.
An Israeli report reported on the website of the newspaper, “Haaretz”, yesterday evening, that the Jordanian authorities recently handed over to the Palestinian side, documents related to the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, where dozens of homes are threatened with eviction.
According to Haaretz, the documents handed over by the Palestinian families to the Israeli Supreme Court show that the Jordanian authorities took steps on the ground to beatify the lands in the name of the Palestinians, but the Israeli occupation of the city in June 1967 cut off this path.
Haaretz pointed out that the difference between these documents and the documents that were handed over previously is that the previous documents spoke of “intentions”, while these documents refer to practical steps to beatify the land in the names of the residents, and that the legal process would have been completed had it not been for Israel’s launch of the 1967 war. and the occupation of Jerusalem.
The documents show that in March 1967, three months before the outbreak of the war, the residents of Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood received an announcement to wait in their homes for the measurement officer to beatify the lands. A month later, the Jordanian Land Registry employee wrote to the Director of the Land Authority that the measurement process had been completed, and the land must now be registered in order to preserve the rights of the “Ministry of Housing and Property, which is delegated to refugee property.”
According to Haaretz, the Jordanian documents are supported by the opinion of a former high-ranking official in the Israeli Military Prosecution who worked in the occupied West Bank, which asserts that “based on them (the Jordanian documents), it can be concluded that the eviction of Palestinians from their homes is illegal.”
In the opinion presented by Dr. Ronit Levin-Schnor, who served as Deputy Legal Counsel for the Civil Administration in the field of territories in the occupied West Bank, said that “there is no doubt that had it not been for external interference resulting from the political changes that occurred in the area (in reference to the occupation in 1967), the settlement procedures would have been It was completed and the occupants of the lands could have been registered as owners in accordance with explicit instructions and clear governmental obligations towards them.”
She stressed that “the law and case law in Israel stipulate that the Israeli government is obligated to continue the registration process initiated by the Jordanians, and to grant the Palestinian residents their rights in their homes.”
On April 21, the Jordanian authorities announced that they had handed over historical documents to Palestine, which consist of correspondence and rental contracts for housing units belonging to the residents of Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, according to what was stated in a statement by the spokesman for the Jordanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Dhaifallah Al-Fayez.
The statement stated that “the Kingdom’s official records, which belong to the Ministry of Construction and Development previously, showed, after careful and lengthy research, the conclusion of lease contracts for housing units for a number of Sheikh Jarrah residents in 1956.”
Al-Fayez said: “In 2019 and this year, the Palestinian embassy in Amman, at the request of the Palestinian side, handed over certified copies of all the documents that were found.”
He pointed out that these documents “consist of lease contracts, correspondence, records and statements in the names of the tenants”, without further details.
He added, “The Palestinian embassy was handed a certified copy of the agreement between the Ministry of Construction and Development and UNRWA in 1954, and that the search process continues for documents dating back more than 60 years.”
Al-Fayez stressed that “establishing Jerusalemites on their land and in their homes and protecting their rights are permanent principles of the Kingdom’s efforts to support the Palestinian brothers.”
He stressed the kingdom’s absolute condemnation of “Israel’s illegal and inhuman attempts to expel the Palestinians from their homes and lands, and its refusal to infringe on their rights.”
