Violent Israeli Demolition of Palestinian Home in Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah Rebuked by US at UN
21:15 GMT 20.01.2022 (Updated: 10:26 GMT 30.01.2024)
© REUTERS / AMMAR AWAD
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The US envoy to the United Nations spoke out on Thursday against the forcible eviction of a Palestinian family in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah by Israeli police earlier this week, saying such actions “exacerbate tensions.” Violence in the district helped spark the destructive 11-day war in Gaza last May.
Speaking at the UN Security Council, US ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield upheld Washington’s commitment to the two-state solution articulated in the Oslo peace process, condemning “all forms of violence and hatred” as inimical to that goal.
“We are particularly concerned about tensions in the West Bank, Gaza, and in and around Jerusalem, especially violence perpetrated against civilians attempting to go about their daily lives,” the US envoy said.
“To make progress, both Israel and the Palestinian Authority must refrain from unilateral steps that exacerbate tensions and undercut efforts to advance a negotiated two-state solution. That includes annexations of territory, settlement activity, demolitions, and evictions – like what we saw in Sheikh Jarrah – incitement to violence, and providing compensation for individuals imprisoned for acts of terrorism,” she added.
Early on Wednesday morning, roughly a dozen Israeli police officers arrived outside the home of the Salhiya family in Sheikh Jarrah, a district in northern East Jerusalem, and dragged the house’s 15 occupants outside before demolishing the structure with a bulldozer. It was the neighborhood's first eviction since 2017.
1/ After forcefully evicting the Salhiye family in freezing temperatures overnight, the Israeli authorities proceeded to raze their homes and all remaining structures on their property. Uprooted from Ein Kerem in 1948, they have now been displaced & left homeless for a 2nd time. pic.twitter.com/QdJdxnJX2b
— Ir Amim English (@IrAmimAlerts) January 19, 2022
Demolishing the Salhiyeh home in Sheikh Jarrah & displacing of Palestinians in Al-Naqab are inseparable from the 70+ yrs of eliminating native Palestinians to sustain settler-colonial rule. The Salhiyeh family, for instance, was expelled by Zionist militias once before in ‘48. pic.twitter.com/rah9I72uj5
— Mohammed El-Kurd (@m7mdkurd) January 19, 2022
According to Yasmin Salhiya, one of the evicted residents, police beat members of her family, including children, and fired rubber bullets. They also arrested 25 people, including five members of the Salhiya family.
‘In A Battle for 25 Years’
Wednesday’s before-dawn raid was the second attempt by Israeli police: on Monday, protesters confronted Israeli forces that included the Yamam counterterrorism unit. Mohammed Salhiya took to the house roof with gas canisters and threatened to burn the structure down if Israeli forces entered it.
“I will burn the house and everything in it,” Salhiyeh said from the roof. “I will not leave here, only from here to the grave, because there is no life, no dignity. I’ve been in a battle with them for 25 years, they sent me settlers who offered to buy the house and I did not agree.”
While the raid failed to evict them, the family’s tree nursery business was demolished.
🚨 The Israeli Occupation Forces have forcibly demolished Al-Salhiyeh family’s business (plant nursery) in Sheikh Jarrah and are planning to demolish their home. The Salhiyeh family are currently demonstrating on the roof of their house, threatening to burn themselves alive. pic.twitter.com/yw95ySXvPt
— Mohammed El-Kurd (@m7mdkurd) January 17, 2022
Israeli authorities claimed the land had been appropriated for public use since 2017 to build a school for children with disabilities, and that the Sulhiya family’s homes were illegal. The family had an active appeal in the Jerusalem District Court, with a final hearing scheduled for January 23.
“There was hope that the family would have more time,” Jawad Siam, head of the Wadi Helweh Information Center monitoring group, told Al Jazeera. “The lawyers had put in a request to extend the time for the demolition – they were expecting that it would be temporarily halted.”
Israel’s envoy to the UN, Gilad Erdan, defended the demolitions.
"We are talking about a family that stole public lands for their own private use, while these lands have been earmarked for the building of a school for children with special needs," Erdan told the UNSC on Thursday.
"This is a municipal issue that has gone through all of the respected channels of the independent Israeli legal system, yet nevertheless the Palestinians use this issue – and this institution’s Pavlovian anti-Israel response – for their own political gains," he added.
A Half-Century of Evictions
The sought eviction of several Palestinian families from Sheikh Jarrah has made the area a major flashpoint in East Jerusalem, with right-wing Jewish groups staging marches through the neighborhood and frequent clashes between Palestinian defenders of the four remaining families and the Israeli police and civilians who attacked their homes.
Protests against an Israeli court’s ruling against the families in May 2021 coincided with violence elsewhere in Jerusalem during Ramadan, including the storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque by Israeli police, which together helped set off 11 days of rocket bombardments by Hamas and airstrikes in Gaza by the Israeli Air Force that killed 254 Gazans and 13 Israelis.
In August, the Israeli Supreme Court attempted to reach a compromise solution by which the land would be ceded to Nahalat Shimon, the Jewish settler organization awarded the land by a lower court, and the four Palestinian families would become “protected tenants” of the group. The families rejected the proposal, saying the land was unquestionably theirs. A similar proposal was again rejected in November.
In the United Nations partition of the UK’s Palestine Mandate in 1947, neither Palestinians or Jewish settlers controlled Jerusalem, which is home to holy sites of both Jews and Muslims, as well as Christians. However, in the war that followed, the newly formed state of Israel captured the western half of Jerusalem, seizing the eastern half from Jordan in 1967 in an ambush offensive that captured the rest of the West Bank, as well.
East Jerusalem’s population was almost purely Palestinian when it was captured, but by 1993, Israeli demolitions of Palestinian neighborhoods and other evictions had made Jews a majority in East Jerusalem. However, in 2019, the Jerusalem and Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) warned that present demographic trends could create a new Palestinian majority in Jerusalem by 2045.
In violation of international law, Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1980 and declared the united city its capital. Many countries have refused to recognize the move and kept their embassies in Tel Aviv, but the US made the shift in 2018, causing several other countries to follow suit.
