Israel Again Evicts Palestinians' Houses In Sheikh Jarrah Area, East Jerusalem

Banner against the eviction of a settlement in Sheikh Jarrah, east Jerusalem. (Wikimedia Commons/Osama Eid)

JAKARTA - Israeli police demolished the home of a Palestinian family in east Jerusalem's sensitive Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood early Wednesday, according to an AFP photographer.

Before dawn, Israeli officers went to the Salhiya family's home, threatened with eviction since 2017 and at the center of an anti-eviction campaign in the Palestinian Territories and abroad, according to a video posted online by police. Shortly afterwards an AFP photographer witnessed the demolition of the house.

"Israeli police completed the execution of the order for the eviction of the illegal building, which was built on land designated for a school for children with special needs from east Jerusalem," a police statement said, citing France24 from AFP January 19.

The officer stressed, "family members living in illegal buildings are given countless opportunities to hand over land with consent."

A police spokesman told AFP that 18 family members and supporters were arrested during the operation for "violating a court order, a bulwark of violence and disturbing public order," but no clashes occurred during the incident.

The Salhiya family have been facing threats of eviction from their home in the Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah since 2017, when the land on which they lived was allocated for the construction of a school.

Earlier, when the police came to carry out the eviction order on Monday, Salhiya's family members climbed onto the roof of the building with gas cylinders, threatening to burn the house and themselves if they were forced out.

"I will burn the house and everything in it, I will not go from here, from here to the graveyard, because there is no life, no dignity," Mahmoud Salhiya said as quoted by Reuters on January 18.

"I have been at war with them for 25 years, they sent me settlers offering to buy a house and I didn't agree," he continued.

Meanwhile, Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Fleur Hassan-Nahoum said Tuesday that the plot that the Salhiya family claims as their own is the private property of a Palestinian owner who then sells it to the city, which allocates it for classrooms for Palestinian children with special needs.

To note, the evictions also cast a shadow over other families of Shiekh Jarrah, which in May sparked an 11-day war between Israel and armed Palestinian factions in Gaza.

Israel captured east Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed it, in a move not recognized by the international community.

More than 200,000 Jewish settlers have moved to the area, sparking tensions with Palestinians, who claim east Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.