Palestinians in east Jerusalem fear for their future
Tania Krämer Jerusalem
August 1, 2021
Four Palestinian families could soon find out whether they will be evicted from their homes in occupied east Jerusalem to make way for Israeli settlers. The move would leave them homeless — and could spark new tensions.
Jews and Palestinians have been clashing over the Sheikh Jarrah for yearsImage: Taina Kraemer/DW
Advertisement
Israel braces for evictions ruling
03:16
This browser does not support the video element.
Muna al-Kurd, a 23-year-old university graduate living in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in occupied east Jerusalem, is facing possible eviction along with her family from their home of more than 60 years.
"All probabilities are on the table. They might reject our appeal which means expulsion, or they might postpone again," said al-Kurd in a video update on social media a few days ago. "I think they will decide in favor of the settlers, not the Palestinians," she added, looking across the street where nationalist religious settlers already took over a house a decade ago.
Nearby homes have already been claimed by nationalist religious settlersImage: Tania Kraemer/DW
On Monday, Israel's Supreme Court could decide the fate of al-Kurd's family, along with that of three other families threatened with eviction from their homes. Earlier this year, a lower Israeli court ruled in favor of the settler organization that claims ownership of the land, paving the way for the eviction of the four families.
But a final decision is still up in the air. Last week, Israeli media reports quoting an unnamed government official suggested the Israeli government might want to seek a freeze in the decision, or won't implement an eviction, so as not to further inflame tensions in the city. A hearing by the Supreme Court on that matter had previously been postponed.
The eviction plans have been sharply criticized by the international community, including the European Union, the United States and the United Nations. The US State Department, in particular, has previously expressed concern; Israel's new prime minister, Naftali Bennett, is expected to visit Washington in the coming weeks.
Muna al-Kurd has become one of the outspoken young voices of a protest campaign against the evictionsImage: Faiz Abu Rmeleh/AA/Getty Images
While the situation has slightly quieted down since May, and media attention moving on to other topics, the residents' uncertainty over their future continues. "Imagine yourself in my place, you live in your house, with all of your memories in your home, the home that is yours and you own," said al-Kurd. "Then comes someone and knocks on your door and demands that you get out, this is not your house, this has become my house. Would you accept this?"
Together with her twin brother, al-Kurd has become one of the young voices of a protest campaign against the evictions on social media and in the street.
Advertisement
Decadeslong battle over the neighborhood
A few hundred meters away, on a hilly spot that overlooks the leafy green neighborhood, Chaim Silberstein visits a small Jewish settlement enclave he helped establish decades ago. It's located near the tomb of Simon the Just, or Shimon HaTzadik, an ancient Jewish high priest who is believed to be buried here. The tomb is particularly revered by ultra-Orthodox Jews who come to the area to pray.
"Dozens of Jewish families lived here until 1948," said Silberstein, referring to the Arab-Israeli war of 1948, also known as the Israeli war of independence, after which Jordan would administer the eastern part of Jerusalem which includes the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. During the Six-Day War between Arabs and Israelis in 1967, Israel captured and later annexed east Jerusalem, in a move not recognized by most of the international community.
"In 1948, the Jordanians illegally occupied all of eastern Jerusalem, including this area, and after 1967, the Jews who were evicted from their homes, from their properties, wanted to return to them. Most were unable to," explained Silberstein who, as founder of the nationalist group Keep Jerusalem, aims to reestablish a Jewish neighborhood here.
"We found the original purchases belonging to two religious trusts in Jerusalem that had purchased this four-acre property in 1875," he said. "Together with a group of investors we purchased the rights to the property in 2003 and then began a process of clarifying the legal status of the Arab tenants of this neighborhood. And the process went through the court system until it reached the Supreme Court."
Silberstein added that the courts had ruled that "the Jewish ownership was authentic and was real and valid."
Laws work against Palestinians: rights groups
Human rights activists, including Hagit Ofran of the Israeli anti-settlement organization Peace Now, have described the legal basis of the court cases as discriminatory. They point out that Israeli law prevents Palestinians from claiming properties lost in the conflict in 1948.
"In 1950 Israel legislated a law, the absentee property law, that says that Palestinians cannot return to their properties in Israel," said Ofran. She added, however, that after the Six-Day War, when Israel occupied east Jerusalem, the Knesset passed a law giving Jews the right to return to their properties there.
Israeli and Palestinian activists have held weekly protests against the expansion of Jewish settlements for yearsImage: Tania Kraemer/DW
"This is the basis, or the discriminatory basis, of all the court cases of eviction that we are seeing in Sheikh Jarrah and in Silwan. Settlers manage to take over the ownership from before '48 and now they are suing Palestinians out of their homes," she said.
According to Peace Now, more than 100 families are in various stages of eviction proceedings filed against them by settler organizations — in Sheikh Jarrah but also in Silwan, a neighborhood located south of Jerusalem's Old City.
'The house is not just a home — it's everything'
For many, the decadeslong battle over Sheikh Jarrah symbolizes the wider Palestinian-Israeli conflict. To Palestinians, who want to see east Jerusalem as the capital in their future sovereign state, it's about decades of Israeli military occupation. Israel, however, views Jerusalem as its undivided capital, and right-wing nationalist settlers want to broaden their presence in the eastern parts of the city.
City of strife: Jerusalem's complex history
Jerusalem is one of the oldest and most contested cities in the world. Jerusalem is revered as a sacred city by Jews, Muslims and Christians alike. For this reason, there has been controversy over the city to this day.
Image: picture-alliance/Zumapress/S. Qaq
Jerusalem, the city of David
According to the Old Testament, David, king of the two partial kingdoms of Judah and Israel, won Jerusalem from the Jebusites around 1000 BC. He moved his seat of government to Jerusalem, making it the capital and religious center of his kingdom. The Bible says David's son Solomon built the first temple for Yahweh, the God of Israel. Jerusalem became the center of Judaism.
Image: Imago/Leemage
Under Persian rule
The Neo-Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II (3rd from the left) conquered Jerusalem in 597 and again in 586 BC, as the Bible says. He took King Jehoiakim (5th from the right) and the Jewish upper class into captivity, sent them to Babylon and destroyed the temple. After Persian king Cyrus the Great seized Babylon, he allowed the exiled Jews to return home to Jerusalem and to rebuild their temple.
The Roman Empire ruled Jerusalem from the year 63 AD. Resistance movements rapidly formed among the population, so that in 66 AD, the First Jewish–Roman War broke out. The war ended 4 years later, with a Roman victory and another destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. The Romans and Byzantines ruled Palestine for approximately 600 years.
Image: Historical Picture Archive/COR
Conquest by the Arabs
Over the course of the Islamic conquest of Greater Syria, Muslim armies also reached Palestine. By order of the Caliph Umar (in the picture), Jerusalem was besieged and captured in the year 637 AD. In the following era of Muslim rule, various, mutually hostile and religiously divided rulers presided over the city. Jerusalem was often besieged and changed hands several times.
Image: Selva/Leemage
The Crusades
From 1070 AD onward, the Muslim Seljuk rulers increasingly threatened the Christian world. Pope Urban II called for the First Crusade, which took Jerusalem in 1099 AD. Over a period of 200 years a total of nine crusades set out to conquer the city as it changed hands between Muslim and Christian rule. In 1244 AD the crusaders finally lost control of the city and it once again became Muslim.
Image: picture-alliance/akg-images
The Ottomans and the British
After the conquest of Egypt and Arabia by the Ottomans, Jerusalem became the seat of an Ottoman administrative district in 1535 AD. In its first decades of Ottoman rule, the city saw a clear revival. With a British victory over Ottoman troops in 1917 AD, Palestine fell under British rule. Jerusalem went to the British without a fight.
Image: Gemeinfrei
The divided city
After World War II, the British gave up their Palestinian Mandate. The UN voted for a division of the country in order to create a home for the survivors of the Holocaust. Some Arab states then went to war against Israel and conquered part of Jerusalem. Until 1967, the city was divided into an Israeli west and a Jordanian east.
Image: Gemeinfrei
East Jerusalem goes back to Israel
In 1967, Israel waged the Six-Day War against Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Israel took control of the Sinai, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem. Israeli paratroopers gained access to the Old City and stood at the Wailing Wall for the first time since 1949. East Jerusalem is not officially annexed, but rather integrated into the administration.
Israel has not denied Muslims access to its holy places. The Temple Mount is under an autonomous Muslim administration; Muslims can enter, visit the Dome of the Rock and the adjacent Al-Aqsa mosque and pray there.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/A. Gharabli
Unresolved status
Jerusalem remains to this day an obstacle to peace between Israel and Palestine. In 1980, Israel declared the whole city its "eternal and indivisible capital." After Jordan gave up its claim to the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 1988, the state of Palestine was proclaimed. Palestine also declares, in theory, Jerusalem as its capital.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/R. Jensen
10 images1 | 10
During the 1948 conflict, the al-Kurd family was displaced from the northern city of Haifa and settled here in the 1950s together with several other Palestinian families who fled from west Jerusalem and other locations. The Jordanian government and UNRWA, the then newly created UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees, had offered a housing project for Palestinian refugees in the neighborhood in return for these families giving up their refugee status. But in recent years, the residents who have lived in Sheikh Jarrah for decades have been fighting in court to remain there.
"The house is not just a home — it's everything. All the memories, the children are born here, my wife and I got married here," said Nabil al-Kurd, Muna's father, adding that he worries most about his children's future. "They have to deal with house demolitions, settler invasion and other strange things happening that don't exist in other parts of the world."
The al-Kurds have already lost an addition to the house that Muna's father built for his children; an Israeli settler from the US moved into the building a decade ago.
"My daughter never slept in this room for even one night," he said. Now, despite a lengthy court battle, the family could lose their house altogether.
A history of the Middle East peace process
For over half a century, disputes between Israelis and Palestinians over land, refugees and holy sites remain unresolved. DW gives you a short history of when the conflict flared and when attempts were made to end it.
UN Security Council Resolution 242, 1967
United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, passed on November 22, 1967, called for the exchange of land for peace. Since then, many of the attempts to establish peace in the region have referred to 242. The resolution was written in accordance with Chapter VI of the UN Charter, under which resolutions are recommendations, not orders.
Image: Getty Images/Keystone
Camp David Accords, 1978
A coalition of Arab states, led by Egypt and Syria, fought Israel in the Yom Kippur or October War in October 1973. The conflict eventually led to the secret peace talks that yielded two agreements after 12 days. This picture from March 26, 1979, shows Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, his US counterpart Jimmy Carter and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin after signing the accords in Washington.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/B. Daugherty
The Madrid Conference, 1991
The US and the former Soviet Union came together to organize a conference in the Spanish capital. The discussions involved Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and the Palestinians — not from the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) — who met with Israeli negotiators for the first time. While the conference achieved little, it did create the framework for later, more productive talks.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/J. Hollander
Oslo I Accord, 1993
The negotiations in Norway between Israel and the PLO, the first direct meeting between the two parties, resulted in the Oslo I Accord. The agreement was signed in the US in September 1993. It demanded that Israeli troops withdraw from West Bank and Gaza Strip and a self-governing, interim Palestinian authority be set up for a five-year transitional period. A second accord was signed in 1995.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Sachs
Camp David Summit Meeting, 2000
US President Bill Clinton invited Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat to the retreat in July 2000 to discuss borders, security, settlements, refugees and Jerusalem. Despite the negotiations being more detailed than ever before, no agreement was concluded. The failure to reach a consensus at Camp David was followed by renewed Palestinian uprising, the Second Intifada.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/R. Edmonds
The Arab Peace Initiative, 2002
The Camp David negotiations were followed first by meetings in Washington and then in Cairo and Taba, Egypt — all without results. Later the Arab League proposed the Arab Peace Initiative in Beirut in March 2002. The plan called on Israel to withdraw to pre-1967 borders so that a Palestinian state could be set up in the West Bank and Gaza. In return, Arab countries would agree to recognize Israel.
Image: Getty Images/C. Kealy
The Roadmap, 2003
The US, EU, Russia and the UN worked together as the Middle East Quartet to develop a road map to peace. While Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas accepted the text, his Israeli counterpart Ariel Sharon had more reservations with the wording. The timetable called for a final agreement on a two-state solution to be reached in 2005. Unfortunately, it was never implemented.
Image: Getty Iamges/AFP/J. Aruri
Annapolis, 2007
In 2007, US President George W. Bush hosted a conference in Annapolis, Maryland, to relaunch the peace process. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas took part in talks with officials from the Quartet and over a dozen Arab states. It was agreed that further negotiations would be held with the goal of reaching a peace deal by the end of 2008.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/S. Thew
Washington, 2010
In 2010, US Middle East Envoy George Mitchell convinced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to and implement a 10-month moratorium on settlements in disputed territories. Later, Netanyahu and Abbas agreed to relaunch direct negotiations to resolve all issues. Negotiations began in Washington in September 2010, but within weeks there was a deadlock.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/M. Milner
Cycle of escalation and ceasefire continues
A new round of violence broke out in and around Gaza in late 2012. A ceasefire was reached between Israel and those in power in the Gaza Strip, which held until June 2014. The kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers in June 2014 resulted in renewed violence and eventually led to the Israeli military operation Protective Edge. It ended with a ceasefire on August 26, 2014.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Paris summit, 2017
Envoys from over 70 countries gathered in Paris, France, to discuss the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Netanyahu slammed the discussions as "rigged" against his country. Neither Israeli nor Palestinian representatives attended the summit. "A two-state solution is the only possible one," French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said at the opening of the event.
Image: Reuters/T. Samson
Deteriorating relations in 2017
Despite the year's optimistic opening, 2017 brought further stagnation in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. A deadly summer attack on Israeli police at the Temple Mount, a site holy to both Jews and Muslims, sparked deadly clashes. Then US President Donald Trump's plan to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem prompted Palestinian leader Abbas to say "the measures ... undermine all peace efforts."
Image: Reuters/A. Awad
Trump's peace plan backfires, 2020
US President Donald Trump presented a peace plan that freezes Israeli settlement construction but retains Israeli control over most of the illegal settlements it has already built. The plan would double Palestinian-controlled territory but asks Palestinians to cross a red line and accept the previously constructed West Bank settlements as Israeli territory. Palestinians reject the plan.
Image: Reuters/M. Salem
Conflict reignites in 2021
Plans to evict four families and give their homes in East Jerusalem to Jewish settlers led to escalating violence in May 2021. Hamas fired over 2,000 rockets at Israel, and Israeli military airstrikes razed buildings in the Gaza Strip. The international community, including Germany's Foreign Ministry, called for an end to the violence and both sides to return to the negotiating table.
