Source: The Independent
Catrina Stewart
A 60-year-old law is being used to evict
Palestinian families and expand Jewish settlements in the coveted
suburbs of East Jerusalem
At the top of a steep and ramshackle street in the Palestinian
neighbourhood of Silwan, a rusty, battered gate opens into an
unremarkable house. Less than a quarter mile away, though, stand the Al
Aqsa mosque and the Wailing Wall, two of Jerusalem's most venerated holy
sites, making it a very attractive piece of real estate indeed.
For Mohammed Sumarin, 52, whose late uncle owned this house, this is
home. He was born here, raised here, and has never lived anywhere else.
But now he faces losing his home of more than half a century to the
Jewish National Fund (JNF), an Israeli charity that claims the house for
its own and is battling to evict the family.
Silwan, sprawled
along the southern flank of Jerusalem's Old City, is the politically
sensitive epicentre of the struggle for East Jerusalem, coveted by
Palestinians as the capital of their future state, and claimed by
Israel, which annexed the eastern sector after the 1967 Six Day War, as
an integral part of an undivided Jerusalem.
The evictions and
demolitions of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem are widely seen as
deliberately aiding Israeli settlers in staking the Jewish claim to the
eastern part of the city to thwart a final peace agreement that could
cleave the city in two.
For the past month, the Sumarins have been
living with the knowledge that they would have to leave their home by
the end of the month or face forcible eviction. "We are not living like
human beings," Mr Sumarin, a severe diabetic who is bedridden for much
of the day, says. "We cannot sleep at night. We live in fear. We expect
them to come at any moment and throw us out."
Waiting in the wings
is Himnuta, the shadowy arm of the JNF, which declares itself the owner
of the house. Himnuta, unlike the Fund, seeks to acquire property
across the Green Line. Israeli and Palestinian activists fear that if
Himnuta gets hold of the house, it will, as it has many times before,
lease the house to El'ad, an extreme religious settler group that has
established a bible-inspired archaeological park in the area and covets
this neighbourhood for the Jews.
