Israeli peace campaigners protest evictions of Jerusalem Palestinians

Friday 11 September, Jerusalem (EAPPI) - Israeli and international peace campaigners held a demonstration in Jerusalem on Thursday to support Palestinian families evicted by the Israeli authorities from their homes in the occupied east of the city.

Demonstrators representing several Israeli human rights organizations gathered by a gate into Jerusalem’s old city to protest at what they called “an attempt to Judaise East Jerusalem and to thwart a political resolution (to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict).”

Around twenty Israeli youths tried to disrupt the demonstration by chanting nationalistic Israeli slogans and taunting the left-wing protestors, but the event was otherwise peaceful.

The demonstration followed the eviction in August of two Palestinian families from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah area of Jerusalem, after an Israeli court ordered them to leave. The Hanoun and Ghawi families, refugees of the 1948 war who left their original homes in West Jerusalem and sought refuge in the then Jordanian-controlled east of the city, were given the houses by the Jordanian authorities in 1956.

But in 1967 Israel captured the east of the city and later annexed it – a move never recognized by the international community. In 1972 settler groups claimed ownership of the two properties, saying Jews had owned them in the 19^th century. A protracted legal battle followed, with the court eventually ruling in favour of the settler groups in spite of their use of allegedly faked Ottoman documents.

The Israelis demonstrating on Thursday, which included Rabbis for Human Rights and the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), said that “the rights of the Palestinian residents (of East Jerusalem) are being trampled on and a discriminatory policy is being implemented by the Israeli government.”

“I have come to protest at what my government does in East Jerusalem, which is a provocation against the Arabs,” said Yehoshua Rosin, a Jewish member of Gush Shalom who fled Nazi Germany as a six-year-old in 1937.

“I have no objection to giving back the homes in East Jerusalem that were owned by Jews but we also have to give back Palestinian homes in West Jerusalem,” he said.

As the occupying power in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights, Israel is prohibited under international law from changing the status of the residents or settling members of its own population in those areas.