A lull in a burning issue. The Israeli Supreme Court on Tuesday (March 1) suspended the evictions of four Palestinian families in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem, the part of the city occupied by Israel. A similar decision was made regarding another family last Tuesday.
These four Palestinian families, threatened with eviction for the benefit of Israeli settlers, will be considered as “protected tenants”, but will have to pay an annual rent of 2,400 shekels (about 660 euros) to a settler organization until the case is finally settled in court, decided the highest court in the country. The Supreme Court has also authorized these families to appeal the decision of the courts that ruled in favor of their eviction.
Clashes frequently break out in Sheikh Jarrah between Israeli police and demonstrators showing their support for Palestinian families. In May 2021, hundreds of Palestinians were injured, a prelude to a conflagration in Israel and the Palestinian Territories. The Palestinian movement Hamas had launched rockets from Gaza towards Israel which had replied, violence followed by an 11-day war.
Palestinian families from Sheikh Jarrah have lived there for decades and claim to have received their properties from Jordan, which controlled East Jerusalem until 1967, when the city came under Israeli occupation.
Facing them, Israeli settlers claim that these plots belong to them, under an Israeli law providing that if Jews can prove that their family lived in East Jerusalem before the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and the creation of Israel , they can ask for their “right of ownership” to be restored to them. No such law exists for Palestinians who lost their property during the war.
In 2021, the families of Sheikh Jarrah had rejected a proposal for “compromise” formulated by Israeli justice, which implied that they recognize that the ownership of their residences was Israeli.