LONDON: An Israeli rights group and a UN expert have condemned Israel’s planned evictions of 16 Palestinian families from East Jerusalem.
Israeli courts have in the last few months upheld eviction orders to force 16 Palestinian families from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, which Israel illegally annexed in 1980.
Linda Ramsden, director of the Israeli Committee Against Housing Demolitions, called the policy of evictions and demolitions “immoral and illegal.”
She told Arab News: “These evictions are just another example of the Israeli policy to reduce East Jerusalem’s Palestinian population, ‘Judaizing’ the city — the term used by Israeli academics and politicians.”
She added: “This action sits alongside other displacements and the seemingly unstoppable rise of illegal West Bank settlements, forcing out Palestinians to make way for Jewish settlers.”
Ramsden said the plans are illegal under international law but are able to pass through the “narrow” Israeli courts.
“Given the ineffectiveness of applying international law, it’s incumbent on us as members of civil society to speak out and pressure our governments to end this illegal and immoral policy,” she added.
Michael Lynk, UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, said the impending evictions, if carried out, would violate the fourth Geneva Convention.
“These evictions are extremely alarming, and appear to be part of a broader pattern of forcing Jerusalemite Palestinian families from their homes to clear the way for more illegal Israeli settlements,” he added.
“The eviction orders are not random but appear to be strategically focused on an area in East Jerusalem known as the Historic Basin,” he said.
“They seem to be aimed at clearing the way for the establishment of more illegal Israeli settlements in the area and physically segregating and fragmenting East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank.”
According to the UN, 877 people, including 391 children, are currently at risk of eviction due to requests from settler organizations. Hundreds of families have already been evicted from their homes in the city.
Organizations such as Nahalat Shimon and Ateret Cohanim, Lynk said, “function as both land ownership companies and settler associations.”
They bring lawsuits to evict Palestinian families, he added, in order to create a Jewish majority in East Jerusalem, and from there “establish demographic facts on the ground that would confirm the illegal Israeli annexation over that part of the city.”
