The Sector of Sheikh Jarrah, nibbled by Jewish settlers, had been the epicenter of riots, which triggered a war in Gaza in May.
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In the middle of the night, by two degrees under zero, a shovel disposed of by the town hall of Jerusalem ended up destroying the house of a family of Palestinian florists, located in the district of Cheikh Jarrah, in Jerusalem East, Wednesday 19 January. For three days, the head of the family, Mohammed Salhiya, rose without respite on the roof of his home, where he had had gas cylinders and a gas jerrican. He threatened to put the fire if the police were trying to expel it.
This is the first time since 2017 that Palestinians are driven out of this sensitive neighborhood. Located on the edge of the Arab part of the holy city occupied by Israel since 1967, the State has established administrative buildings (border police, court), and justice allows the establishment of settlers.
These benefit from a law authorizing a Jew or his heirs, but not an Arab, to claim the property of a land that was expelled during the 1948 war at the birth of Israel, when the city was split in half. Some 70 families of this narrow and sported valley are now threatened with expulsion. In May 2021, their struggle was the catalyst for a brief Palestinian national uprising, accompanied by a new war in Gaza.
In this cauldron, the expulsion of Salhiya has previous value. The activists of the neighborhood do not merge: from Monday, to the appearance of the first gear of demolition, Muna al-Kurd, the voice of the protesters of May, who resists the expulsion of his own family, had come Denounce, near his neighbor, “an ethnic cleansing” in progress at Sheikh Jarrah. “Their politics will lead to a massacre, but they do not care,” she said, predicting a new lighting.
Ambiguous case
Palestinian human rights organizations and the Israeli left are in unison. They fear that the right exploits this expulsion, arguing that, if the fate of Salhiya does not arouse new disorders, other families could follow.
The case of Salhiya is distinct, isolated, more ambiguous. The father is Palestinian, the Israeli Jewish mother. Their home, present on cards of Jerusalem from the beginning of the XX e century, is located on a hillside, says formerly “the vine of Mufti”. The land has long belonged to the family of a great mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammed Amin al-Husseini. This figure of Palestinian nationalism, compromised with Nazi Germany during the Second World War, had a villa in this campaign.
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