ISRAEL
Let’s Make a Deal
Palestinian families facing eviction rejected a proposal by Israel’s Supreme Court to delay their ejection from a neighborhood in East Jerusalem, the latest development in a saga that recently sparked deadly clashes between Israelis and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the Washington Post reported Monday.
The court offered a compromise in which the four Palestinian families living in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood would recognize the Jewish settlers seeking their eviction as their legal landlords. In return, the families would receive a special status that would shield them from eviction for an uncertain number of years.
The case has been a main point of contention between Palestinians and Jewish settlers in the strategically critical neighborhood that connects East Jerusalem with the Old City in a dispute that has dragged on for decades.
Jewish settlers called the case a real estate issue while Palestinian residents see the issue as another attempt to “Judaize” Jerusalem and carry out ethnic cleansing against Palestinians.
In May, clashes erupted between Palestinians and Israeli police in Sheikh Jarrah – which Jewish settlers refer to as Nahalat Shimon – over the planned evictions. The violence escalated to an 11-day conflict between the Israeli military and Hamas, killing 12 people in Israel and at least 250 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Aviv Tatarsky of the left-leaning Israeli nonprofit Ir Amim said the current eviction case is one of the latest examples of a wave of evictions against Palestinians in East Jerusalem, which intensified during the administrations of President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
He noted that the settler groups still feel they have the “green light” to pursue evictions despite a change of government in the US and Israel.
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