OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)
The Israeli Magistrate Court issued a verdict on Monday evicting three Palestinian families from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in Occupied Jerusalem in favor of settlers.
According to the court’s decision, the three families were given until mid-July of the current year to implement the eviction ruling targeting the homes, where three families comprising 20 individuals reside.
The WAFA news agency quoted Saleh Diab, a member of the defense committee for Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, who owns one of the targeted houses, as saying that the Jerusalem Magistrate Court held a session regarding the case at the end of May last year, during which the court judge said that there was a decision from the Israeli Supreme Court to freeze the eviction decisions of 28 families from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.
Lawyer Diab confirmed that the settler organization Nahalat Shimon exerted pressure on the Magistrate Court judge to reconsider the case, which made him reopen the case and give the families’ lawyer and the settlers’ lawyer four months to respond to the allegations. Today, the decision was issued to evict the three families from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.
Diab explained that the family has been living in those houses for 56 years, and their legal struggle began in 2009 after receiving the judicial notifications.
This ruling comes in the context of the continuous practices of the occupation authority for years to displace the residents of Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood by various means, which the residents reject while clinging to their homes despite all the occupation’s attempts to dissuade them.
Since October last year, Palestinian citizens in Jerusalem have been subjected to a fierce attack by the occupation authority and settlers, coinciding with the brutal aggression on the Gaza Strip and the daily assaults and incursions in various areas of the West Bank.
During that period, 59 Palestinians were martyred in Jerusalem, and 172 others were injured by the occupation forces. 1,325 people were arrested, and 155 of them were sentenced to actual imprisonment.
During the same period, the occupation authorities issued 85 house arrest orders, 68 orders for expulsion from the city of Jerusalem, and other travel bans and demolished 133 houses, while 18,300 settlers stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque.
