Tensions High in Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah Ahead of Supreme Court Ruling on Evictions
by i24 News
i24 News – The Israeli Supreme Court on Monday was set to examine the appeal filed by four Palestinian families residing in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem.
They are threatened with eviction, while an Israeli religious Zionist association claims that the houses where they live legally belong to Jewish families present in the neighborhood before 1948.
To support its claims, the association submitted to the Court a document which would prove that the process of cession of these homes to Palestinians by Jordan was suspended during the Six Day War in 1967.
The Court’s decision raises fears of renewed tensions around this particularly sensitive issue. The district was the scene of numerous clashes last spring, fueled in particular by Hamas, which encouraged the young Palestinians to “save Sheikh Jarrah and to oppose the Zionists who sought to appropriate it.”
For the sake of appeasement, the United States then spoke out against the eviction of the Palestinians, while Israel’s Prime Minister Naftali Bennett a few weeks ago wanted the decision on the eviction of families to be postponed for six months.