On Saturday, Israeli occupation forces closed off the entirety of Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem (or al-Quds as it is known in Arabic), following the repression of a peaceful demonstration against the forced displacement of neighbourhood residents.
According to eyewitnesses, occupation forces completely closed off Sheikh Jarrah after expelling protestors expressing solidarity with those residents threatened with losing their homes to settlers.
Eyewitnesses claimed that occupation forces blocked non-residents from entering the neighbourhood and arrested two of those protesting in solidarity, and added that the same forces stormed two Palestinian homes, one belonging to the al-Kurd and the other to the al-Atiyah family, both of whom are threatened with eviction, to the likely gain of settlers.
Israeli occupation forces repressed one solidarity demonstration with Sheikh Jarrah earlier that Saturday.
For nearly three months, occupation forces have suppressed protests in support of the neighbourhood’s residents and impeded the work of both medics and journalists.
28 Palestinian families are threatened with eviction from homes they have lived in since 1956, which Israeli settlement groups claim were built on lands that were Jewish-owned before 1948, a claim which residents dispute and historical documents disprove.
500 al-Quds residents live across 28 homes in Sheikh Jarrah, all of whom are in danger of displacement due to pressure from settlement groups and following years’ worth of complicity from the occupation courts, one of which recently ruled that seven families were to be evicted in favour in settlers, despite the families legally owning the land.
Following the decision by the Israeli central country to evict those seven families from their homes, Arab Organisation for Human Rights in the UK (AOHR UK) has raised an urgent call to all of the international community’s institutions and bodies to together save dozens of Palestinian residents of Sheikh Jarrah from such mass forced displacement.
