JERUSALEM: Israeli police destroyed the home of a Palestinian family and arrested at least 18 people as they carried out a controversial eviction order in the sensitive east Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah early Wednesday.
The looming eviction of other families from Sheikh Jarrah in May last year fuelled an 11-day war between Israel and armed Palestinian factions in Gaza.
Before dawn, Israeli officers went to the home of the Salhiya family, threatened with eviction since 2017, when the land where their house sits was allocated for school construction.
“Israel police completed the execution of an eviction order of illegal buildings built on grounds designated for a school for children with special needs from east Jerusalem,“ a police statement said.
It said “members of the family living in the illegal buildings were given countless opportunities to hand over the land with consent”.
An AFP photographer witnessed the demolition of the house.
A police spokesman told AFP 18 family members and supporters were arrested for “violating a court order, violent fortification and disturbing public order,“ but no clashes took place during the eviction.
When police arrived to carry out the order on Monday, Salhiya family members went up to the building's roof with gas canisters, threatening to set the contents and themselves alight if they were forced out of their home.
Police had eventually backed off.
A lawyer for the Salhiya family said the demolition carried out early Wednesday was “illegal”, since the municipality had received the court’s permission to vacate the property but not destroy it.
“The eviction decision is for Mahmud Salhiya and his wife and not for the rest of the family,“ attorney Walid Abu-Tayeh told AFP, noting a court hearing on January 23 on the issue.
Abu-Tayeh confirmed reports that Mahmud's wife, Meital, is an Israeli Jew.
He said police had arrested 20 people during the operation, six of them Israelis, with the latter being released, adding that “the Arab detainees were assaulted.”
Jerusalem deputy mayor Fleur Hassan-Nahoum said Tuesday the plot that the Salhiya family claim as theirs belonged to private Palestinian owners who then sold it to the city, which allocated it for classrooms for special needs Palestinian children.
A delegation of European diplomats visited the site during the standoff. “In occupied territory, evictions are a violation of international humanitarian law,“ the head of the European Union’s mission to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Sven Kuehn von Burgsdorff, told AFP.
Human Rights Watch Israel and Palestine director Omar Shakir called the eviction “cruel” and stressed that the Salhiya family had previously been forced from their west Jerusalem home during Israel’s creation in 1948.
Wednesday’s eviction made them “two-time refugees”, he said.
Hundreds of Palestinians face eviction from homes in Sheikh Jarrah and other east Jerusalem neighbourhoods. Circumstances surrounding the eviction threats vary.
In some cases, Jewish Israelis have lodged legal claims to plots they say were illegally taken during the war that accompanied Israel's creation in 1948.
Palestinians say their homes were legally purchased from Jordanian authorities who controlled east Jerusalem between 1948 and 1967.
Israel captured east Jerusalem in the Six-Day War of 1967 and later annexed it in a move not recognised by the international community.
More than 200,000 Jewish settlers have since moved into the city's eastern sector, fuelling tensions with Palestinians, who claim it as the capital of their future state. - AFP