Israeli police evict Palestinian family from Sheikh Jarrah, neighborhood that sparked May 2021 conflict with Hamas
The remains of a house that was destroyed by Israeli authorities, in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, Jan. 19, 2022. (Jamal Awad/Flash90)
(JTA) — Israeli police evicted a Palestinian family early Wednesday morning from their home in Sheikh Jarrah, the East Jerusalem neighborhood where conflicts over eviction of Palestinian families helped set off a war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza in May 2021.
The family was evicted to make way for a school to serve Palestinian children with special needs, The Times of Israel reported, citing Jerusalem city officials.
“We do this for any structure that is built illegally. It happens in West Jerusalem, and it happens in East Jerusalem,” Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Fleur Hasson-Nahoum told The Times of Israel.
The Salihya family said they had lived in the home since the 1950s but Hasson-Nahoum said it had been illegally constructed in the 1990s. Obtaining official permits for construction in East Jerusalem is notoriously difficult for Palestinians, leading many to build illegally.
The plot of land on which the Salihya’s home stood has been the subject of a legal battle since 2017 when the Jerusalem municipality announced plans to construct a school on the site. Though the family sued to stop the plans, a court ruled against the family last year.
One member of the family threatened to set himself on fire as Israeli police waited with bulldozers to demolish the building Monday. Eventually Israeli police arrested 18 people and destroyed the building.
Sheikh Jarrah, an eastern Jerusalem neighborhood that some Israeli Jews refer to as Shimon Hatzaddik, is a largely Palestinian neighborhood. During the 1948 war, Jews who had been living in Sheikh Jarrah fled the area and weren’t allowed to return when Jordan took it over. Jordan gave housing in the neighborhood to a small number of Palestinian families who had fled Israel in the war and were not allowed to return. Those families had to begin paying rent to Israelis once Israel took eastern Jerusalem over in 1967.
Over the past decade or so, a group of Israeli Jews have petitioned Israeli courts to let them reclaim ownership and evict the Palestinian tenants. Dozens of Palestinians would be forced to leave their homes if the evictions go through. Protests in the neighborhood over the evictions in May 2021 helped set off a violent conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza which ended in a ceasefire after 11 days.
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