Occupied Jerusalem- The Shehadeh family, who has lived in the “Batn al-Hawa” neighborhood in the town of Silwan, south of Al-Aqsa Mosque since 1967, bid farewell to every corner of their three homes, from which 15 members will be forcibly evicted on behalf of the settlers.
The occupation, through its settlement arms, is working to displace 750 Jerusalemites from the Batn al-Hawa neighborhood, claiming that home ownership belonged to Jews before the Nakba.
Since 2015, the Shehadeh family has been waging a legal battle to keep the house. It reached the Supreme Court to find before it extremist judges who supported the settlement, according to the family’s lawyer, Yazid Kawar.
Tel Aviv Tribune Net was unable to reach the residents of the house threatened with eviction, but its lawyer told Tel Aviv Tribune Net that the first eviction lawsuit filed against the family was in 2015, and in 2020 a decision was issued against it by the Israeli Magistrate Court in occupied Jerusalem, and after an appeal in the Central Court, the latter issued a decision against it. This is the Jerusalemite family in 2022, after which the file was referred to the Israeli Supreme Court.
End of the legal process
Kawar stated that all the judges who looked into the family’s case were right-wing, including the Supreme Court judge who also issued an expulsion decision against the family, adding that on April 11, Israeli Supreme Court judge Noam Solberg issued a decision giving the Shehadeh family a deadline to leave their home until The date is the first of next June.
Lawyer Kawar filed a petition against this judge, and claimed in his petition that the latter issued his decision without waiting for the government’s judicial advisor, Ghali Behraf Mayara, to respond to the file. The appeal was rejected on May 26, and thus the legal process for this case ended, and the family’s expulsion was in progress. Immediately after the expiration of the deadline set by the court.
According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, in December 2022, Supreme Court Judge Uzi Fogelman asked the government’s judicial advisor to provide a legal opinion on the issue of “land classification and its impact on endowment rights,” and Judge Noam Solberg decided 11 months ago that We must wait for the opinion of the judicial advisor, but he returned and issued a ruling to evacuate the family without waiting for her opinion.
He said – according to Haaretz newspaper – “I do not think it is necessary to continue waiting until the government’s judicial advisor receives the opinion… I also point out that after examining the matter, it seems that there is no need for such a measure, expanding the legal framework and delving into legal matters that are not required in order to Make decision”.
Existing danger
In his comment on this, lawyer Kawar said, “In the end, the Shehadeh family was punished due to the judicial advisor’s delay in presenting her opinion,” indicating that the risk of eviction would extend to other families in the neighborhood, and would pave the way for oppression against them.
Kawar touched on the contradiction with which the Israeli courts deal, “For example, the Israeli Custodian General claimed that the land – on which Palestinian homes were built in the western part of the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, known as “Kabaniyya Umm Haroun” – is a Jewish endowment, and the settlers won the case there.” .
He added: “We used the same claim and arguments of the public trustee in the Shehada family file in Batn al-Hawa and said that the land was classified as princely land from the Ottoman era and according to Ottoman law it should not be owned by a waqf on it, but the court did not address even a single word to this claim and it was completely ignored.”
The Batn al-Hawa neighborhood is part of the middle neighborhood, one of the neighborhoods of the town of Silwan, and the “Ateret Cohanim” settlement association claims ownership of 5 dunums and 200 square meters in it (a dunum equals a thousand square metres). So far, the people have received orders to expel 750 Jerusalemites from 87 houses they live in, According to the head of the Batn al-Hawa neighborhood committee, Zuhair al-Rajabi.
Penetrated by the occupying force
Settlement penetration into the neighborhood began in 2004 with the establishment of two settlement outposts, then escalated in 2014 to now reach 6 outposts, (the outposts range from a room to a building) in which 23 settler families live.
The settlement association claims that the ownership of homes in the neighborhood belongs to Jews of Yemeni origin before 1948, and in 2018 it opened the “Yemeni Jewish Heritage Center” claiming that a synagogue belonging to them had stood in the place and was called “House of Honey.”
Since the outbreak of the war on Gaza last October, attacks on the residents of the neighborhood have escalated from the settlers invading it, their guards, and the occupation forces that support them around the clock.
Among these attacks was the seizure of a piece of land belonging to the Al-Salwadi and Abu Dhiab families, claiming that it was public land that had been converted into private land by the occupying force, according to Al-Rajabi.
In addition to this, the daily harassment faced by residents who describe life next to the settlers as “hell,” and the attacks reach their peak during the Jews’ celebration of their national and religious holidays alike, as the neighborhood turns into a military barracks and its people are imprisoned in their homes so that the Jews can enjoy freedom of movement and access to the synagogue, which It was opened years ago among the homes of Jerusalemites.
