#SaveSheikhJarrah: israel Breaks International Law by Expelling Palestinians From their Own Land, and the International Community Remains Silent

Analysis by Roa Daher, Featured Writer

April 25th, 2021

On May 2nd, 2021, Mohammed Al-Kurd and his family will have to leave their home in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem, and they are not the only ones. By order of the Jerusalem District Court, six families comprising 27 people, including Al-Kurd’s family, will be forcibly evicted from the houses they have lived in for seven decades. The expulsion of Palestinians from their homes to replace them with israeli settlers has been an inhumane and illegal project that has been ongoing ever since the 1948 Nakba.

If the indigenous Palestinian population isn’t being threatened with eviction, then they are consistently harassed by israeli settlers.

Within East Jerusalem, Palestinian families have gradually been kicked out of their homes over the past few decadesto make room for the continuously growing settler population. Even though the settlers have no legal claim over that land, and often forge documents to claim the land as theirs, israeli law sanctions the eviction of Palestinians regardless of whether they have proof of ownership of the land or not. 

Specifically, Sheikh Jarrah is significant and has been targeted by Zionist settlers for decades because of its position in East Jerusalem, making it an obstruction in the israeli project to Judaise Jerusalem.

Over the years, there have been more and more court orders for the eviction of Palestinians from East Jerusalem to achieve the goal of a true capital for israel: a Jerusalem only occupied by Jews. Other neighborhoods that have been housing Palestinians in East Jerusalem like Silwan’s Batan Al Hawa have also been targets for forced evictions, as 100 families there are facing israel’s threat of eviction. Also, within Sheikh Jarrah, 45 families in Umm Haroun and 30 families in Karm al-Jaouni are facing the same threat. 

The story of Sheikh Jarrah began many decades ago— to be accurate, it began with the Nakba in 1948 with 15,000 Palestinians killed and around 800,000 Palestinians expelled and forcibly removed from their homes, with no right to return as they fled for their lives. In 1956, the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood was established as the result of an agreement between the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and the Jordanian government. As a result of this agreement, 28 families were provided with housing established by the Jordanian government, promising that ownership would be given to them in 3 years’ time. However, the 1967 annexation of Jerusalem came soon after and two Jewish committees registered for the ownership of that land in 1972 with the Land Department. The Palestinian families that were initially relocated to Sheikh Jarrah were left powerless to contest the Jews’ claims since their proof-of-ownership documents were from Jordan, meaning that they were not recognized in israel. The residents of Sheikh Jarrah have already endured and survived one expulsion in 1948, and it is that very expulsion from their hometowns and villages that led them to relocate to Sheikh Jarrah. The hundreds of Palestinian families living in East Jerusalem did not move there by choice: they moved there because they were forcibly removed from their homes in 1948 by the Zionist occupational state that slaughtered thousands of them all while taking over their land.

The Absentee Property Law introduced in 1950 is the reason why settlers can very easily claim any plot of land in Occupied Palestine. The law dictates that all of the land of the Palestinians who had fled in 1948, who are considered ‘absentees’, can legally be claimed by the israeli state. This law caused a mass-scale disposition and loss of Palestinian land, as many Palestinians fled to neighboring countries during the Nakba in order to escape death, and israelis wasted absolutely no time in stealing their land and demolishing their homes. To add insult to injury, even though East Jerusalem is considered to be occupied under international law and thus, is subject to the relevant laws, israel annexed it in 1967 and subjected it to israeli jurisdiction which includes the Absentee Property Law. In 1970, the Knesset passed the Legal and Administrative Matters Law which stated that residents of East Jerusalem are not considered absentees; however, Palestinians who lived outside the newly drawn borders of Jerusalem but owned land within the city were considered ‘absentees’, subjecting their land to israeli theft. The 1970 Law also applies to property owned by Jews prior to the 1948 Nakba. Between 1948 and 1967, the properties were transferred to the Jordanian Custodian of Enemy Property, as a result of the Jordanian occupation. After the 1967 annexation of East Jerusalem, the israeli Custodian General gained control of these properties.

Thus, according to the 1970 Law, the Custodian General must release these properties to the legitimate pre-1948 owners or their heirs, which should include Palestinians who owned land there prior to the Nakba. However, as injustice seeps into every single aspect of the Palestinians’ lives who are living under the illegal occupation, the properties are only released to israelis who often forge documents to prove their ownership of the land. The only way that the rightful Palestinian owners of that property can fight against eviction and dispossession is within the israeli judicial system, which is a part of the Zionist state that has, and continues to, ethnically cleanse Palestinians, imprison them, and expel them from their land.

The whole premise of the Zionist state rests upon the idea of creating a state for Jews only and eliminating Palestinians at any cost. 

Where does this leave the residents of Sheikh Jarrah? Under international law, Eastern Jerusalem is considered to be occupied territory, which makes any move to remove Palestinians from their homes illegal. Any attempt to evict residents of occupied territories violates international law since the demographic makeup of the occupied territories mustn’t be altered. Unsurprisingly, the proceedings in israeli courts do not take this into consideration, and so year after year, hundreds of Palestinians are expelled from their homes in East Jerusalem, and other places in Occupied Palestine, all while israel does not face any real repercussions. An apartheid state, based on Jewish supremacy, that regularly violates the human rights of Palestinians hails itself to be the only democracy in the Middle East.

And yet, it flagrantly breaks international law with no real consequences, all while the residents of Sheikh Jarrah, and other neighborhoods in Eastern Jerusalem, are left homeless to allow israeli settlers to move into property that is not and will never be theirs.