The Israeli occupation forces arrested, this evening, Saturday, 4 Palestinian youths, after the attack and suppression of the participants in a march against settlement and displacement of residents in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in occupied Jerusalem.
Eyewitnesses reported that the people gathered in a mass rally in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood against the displacement of 7 Jerusalemite families, and the handover of their homes to settlers early next month.
The occupation forces violently repressed the participants, and arrested 4 of them, including two young men, Omar Abu Sneina and Anas Jabareen, while they beat others and prevented the march from continuing its way.
The marchers held banners calling on the world to intervene to stop the forced deportations that the residents of Sheikh Jarrah are subjected to.
The families threatened with displacement live in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in the "Karm al-Jaouni" area. They are all refugees who were displaced from their lands and villages in 1948, and they live in Jerusalem.
28 families were chosen for which housing units were built in the Karam al-Jaouni area, and they were then contracted through the Jordanian government to pay rent for a period of 3 years, and after that the houses would become their property, and the lease contracts expired in 1959, and citizens began to act as the owner in real estate.
But after the occupation of the Holy City in 1967; The residents were surprised by two Jewish committees that went to the Land Department in 1972 and registered their ownership of this land, which has an area of ​​about 18 dunums.
These committees did not inform citizens of what they had done, and began to demand that they vacate their properties, claiming that they have no right to own it, and thus dozens of cases branched out in Israeli courts.
In the context, the Israeli occupation forces arrested, this evening, two young people celebrating the Sabbath of Light in the occupied city of Jerusalem, when they tried to reach the Church of the Holy Sepulcher for prayer, so the occupation soldiers attacked and arrested them.
Eyewitnesses reported that the occupation forces brutally arrested one of the youths, while they handcuffed the other and took them to the Al-Qishla detention center in the Old City.
Since early morning, the occupation forces have deployed many police checkpoints in order to distress our Christian people celebrating the Sabbath of Light, and have checked the identity of bystanders under the pretext of applying medical procedures that limit the spread of the Coronavirus.
The merchants present in the vicinity of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher complained of poor sales and tourism due to the deliberate Israeli measures, noting that the occupation closed the perimeter of the church last year due to the Corona pandemic, and during the current year it impeded the arrival of worshipers and celebrants to the vicinity of the church, which caused a significant weakening of the commercial movement.
