Tenants' Rights in East Jerusalem?

The small bulldozer worked very carefully. There was no wanton destruction this time. It maneuvered carefully around the mature tree in the tiny garden to clear the rubbish, demolish a small section of wall the Israeli setters required for easier access and carried blocks and cement required for the home improvements. Soldiers, border guards, private security officers and police stood guarding the entrance to the small garden determined that no 'unauthorized' person should enter. The house, an unoccupied small end terrace in the Sheikh Jarrah area of East Jerusalem, is according to local sources owned by the Palestinian Hijazi family. A settler group, acting on behalf of an Israeli, Irving Moskovitch, has been contesting the rights of occupancy to the building using as evidence an old lease agreement. The court decision is apparently still awaited but Moskovich, convinced that possession is 10/10 of the law here in occupied East Jerusalem took possession on Sunday 26^th July and immediately started reconstruction work on the premises. He was, as is usual in East Jerusalem, supported in his efforts by the Israeli Security Forces.

When I arrived the situation was calm but tense. Earlier police had arrested seven people, mostly internationals, who tried to stop the settlers and the bulldozer getting access to yet another Palestinian home. A few young Palestinian boys were pushing the boundaries, annoying the soldiers or police and journalists were filming the action and trying to understand the politics behind the story. As I stood and watched the proceedings I wondered why an Israeli would choose to go to such trouble to acquire such a tiny house with very little land right in the middle of a Palestinian area. The answer was not difficult to find.

At the other end of the terrace of tiny homes lives Nazera Siam, a 76-year-old Palestinian woman who has lived in Sheikh Jarrah since 1969.  Like the 'taken' house at the other end her home is owned by the Hijazi family to whom she used to pay a monthly rent of 300 shekels [approximately 79 USD or 56 EUR]. But the Hijazi family is an absentee landlord, Palestinians currently living in Jordan and not allowed, by the Israel authorities, to return to East Jerusalem or the West Bank.¹ As a consequence the Custodian of Absentee Properties has apparently pre-empted any court decision and leased the property to Irving Moskovitch. Mr. Moskovitch has visited Nazera twice, she told me.  Once to tell her he was her new "landlord" and insisting she sign a new contract. Believing she had no choice this frail, elderly lady, who did not understand that by signing she was depriving herself of the protection she enjoyed under the previous rent agreement, signed the contact in good faith. When Moskovitch made his return visit he did a house inspection, decided that she had made improvements to her home and consequently raised the rent. He raised the rent from 300 to 1,900 shekels per month [500 USD or 354 EUR]. 

"We are poor people," she said as she showed me around her neat, well organised tiny home. "We cannot pay that rent." Nazera's home is really little more than one room with one small window but because she shares it with her son, his wife and their baby daughter it has been divided into two small bedrooms, a narrow corridor that is used as a living space and a corner developed as the kitchen area.

The rent increase of over 500 percent is well beyond the means of this poor family and consequently she faces a court hearing in mid-September for non-payment of rent and fears that eviction will follow in due course. She has neither the resources nor the strength to fight Mr. Moskovitch and the Israeli state legislative body relating to Absentee Properties. Irving Moskovitch’s sights apparently are on all the homes owned by the Hijazi family from the one he has taken at one end of the terrace to Nazera’s at the other.  His tactics are less than subtle; take possession of a house with the support of the security forces and/or manipulate and trick an elderly tenant so that he can fix an exorbitant rent he knows she does not have the resources to meet, thus enabling him to evict her and acquire her home. 

Israel defends its use of Absentee Properties law in East Jerusalem and in the West Bank and uses it as a means of establishing settlements, big and small. The overwhelming majority of the international community has rejected Israel's claims to East Jerusalem and the West Bank basing their opposition on Article 49 of the Geneva Convention, which states, "The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies." But while the international community has raised it voice in protest it has failed miserly to take any meaningful action to stop such breaches of international law. Until it does, people like Nazera Siam will continue to suffer the expansionist policies of Israeli occupation in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.