Palestinians fear loss of homes as evictions loom

Outcome of lengthy legal dispute concerns families and activists

Joseph Krauss ASSOCIATED PRESS

Palestinians fear loss of homes as evictions loom — The Palm Beach Post, 11 May 2021 — The Palm Beach Post · West Palm Beach, Florida · 11 May 2021

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JERUSALEM – When Samira Dajani’s family moved into their first home in 1956 after years as refugees, her father planted trees in the garden, naming them for each of his six children. Today, two towering pines named for Mousa and Daoud stand watch over the entrance to the garden where they all played as children.

Pink bougainvillea climbs an iron archway on a path leading past almond, orange and lemon trees to their modest stone house. “The Samira tree has no leaves,” she said, pointing to the cypress that bears her name. “But the roots are strong.” She and her husband, empty nesters with grown children of their own, might have to leave it all behind on Aug. 1.

That’s when Israel is set to forcibly evict them following a decades-long legal fight waged by ideological Jewish settlers against them and their neighbors. The Dajanis are one of several Palestinian families facing imminent eviction in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of east Jerusalem.

The families’ plight has ignited weeks of demonstrations and clashes in recent days between protesters and Israeli police. It also highlights an array of discriminatory polices that rights groups said are aimed at pushing Palestinians out of Jerusalem to preserve its Jewish majority.

The Israeli rights group B’Tselem and the New York-based Human Rights Watch pointed to such policies as an example of what they said has become an apartheid regime. Israel rejects those accusations and said the situation in Sheikh Jarrah is a private real-estate dispute that the Palestinians have seized upon to incite violence.

The Foreign Ministry did not respond to questions submitted by the Associated Press. A top municipal official and a settler group marketing “residential plots” in Sheikh Jarrah did not respond to requests for comment. Settler groups said the land was owned by Jews before the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation.

Israeli law allows Jews to reclaim such lands but bars Palestinians from recovering property they lost in the same war, even if they still reside in areas controlled by Israel.

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"Palestinians fear loss of homes as evictions loom," The Palm Beach Post, 11 May 2021, p. 4A. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2021-019. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2021-019