State Department spokesman Ned Price has called on the Israeli government not to expel Palestinians from their homes where they have lived for decades in the Sheikh Jarrah area.
"We had just heard these reports (about the Israeli court´s decision to postpone implementation), but we are closely following reports regarding Sheikh Jarrah´s hearing," said Price, who was responding to a question at his daily press conference at the State Department about the Israeli court´s decision to postpone the execution of sheikh al-Jarrah´s family from their homes, and whether the U.S. government would take this occasion as an opportunity to ask Israel to overturn the unfair expulsion decision and overturn the ruling. We have made this point before: families should not be expelled from the homes they have lived in for decades, we will not discuss these emerging reports or comment on various detailed legal discussions, but we are following them closely and will continue to do so."
The Israeli Supreme Court had postponed the ruling on the decision to evacuate the Palestinians from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem until an unspecified date, in a session held today, Monday, August 2, 2021.
The decision to postpone came during a session that examined the petitions of 4 Palestinian families against the decisions to evacuate their homes in the neighborhood, and to replace them with settlers, according to Palestinian sources.
The families said that they refused the court’s offer to remain in the homes as “protected tenants” and pay a symbolic annual rent in exchange for them acknowledging the settlers’ ownership of the properties, according to Muhammad al-Kurd, one of those threatened with eviction.
Judge Yitzhak Amit requested to see more documents and data, noting that the court “will publish the decision later,” without specifying a clear date.
Lawyer Sami Irsheed, representing the four Palestinian families whose files the Supreme Court discussed in Monday´s session, stressed the rejection of the court´s offer.
"We agree to be considered as protected tenants, but while preserving our rights (...) We will ask for recognition of the property rights granted to us by the Jordanian government," he said.
In a statement, the Palestinian families threatened with expulsion said they had asked the court to accept legal advice from a legal specialist.
According to the statement, “the lawyers submitted a request to accept legal advice to Dr. Ronit Levin Shnur, a professor of law and a researcher at the Gazette Globe Institute for Real Estate Research.
The statement added that Shnour concluded that "the Jordanian government did everything necessary to register home ownership before the outbreak of the June War (1967), and it was not able to do so because of the war, and the government of Israel must respect the commitments of the Jordanian government."
Jordan handed over new documents to Palestinian families threatened with eviction in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem, proving that the Jordanian authorities had begun in 1967 to transfer the ownership of lands and buildings on them to the Palestinians.
According to press reports, “Jordanian documents that were recently handed over to the Palestinian side, and related to the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in which dozens of homes are threatened with eviction, and were handed over to the Israeli Supreme Court, show that the Jordanian authorities have taken steps on the ground to beatify the lands in the name of the Palestinians, but the Israeli occupation of the city in June 1967 cut this path.”
According to the Jordanian newspaper, Al-Ghad, “the difference between these documents and those that were handed over previously last April, is that the previous documents speak of intentions, while these documents refer to practical steps to beatify the land in the names of the residents, and that the legal path was about to be completed if not for Israel’s launch of the 1967 war. and the occupation of Jerusalem. .
The documents show that “in March 1967, that is, 3 months before the outbreak of the war, the residents of Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood obtained an announcement to wait for the measurement official in their homes in order to beatify the lands for them. The land must now be registered in order to preserve the rights of the Ministry of Housing and Property, which is delegated to refugee properties.”
According to press reports, “the Jordanian documents are supported by the opinion of a former high-ranking official in the Israeli Military Prosecution who worked in the occupied West Bank, who asserts that based on the Jordanian documents, it can be concluded that evacuating Palestinians from their homes is illegal.”
