The Sheikh Jarrah controversy, which has been described as a "property/real estate dispute" by the Israeli government and its supporters,Lucy Garbett, 'I live in Sheikh Jarrah. For Palestinians, this is not a ‘real estate dispute’ The Guardian, 17 May 2021: "There have been many attempts to portray the cases of dispossession in Jerusalem, and Sheikh Jarrah specifically, as isolated, individual incidents, painting them as "real estate disputes" that drag on for years in court. But for Palestinians, Sheikh Jarrah is simply a microcosm of life in Jerusalem. It symbolises the continuing ethnic cleansing of our land and homes."Haynes Brown, 'The latest Israel-Palestine crisis isn't a 'real estate dispute'. It's ethnic cleansing', MSNBC, 11 May 2021: "Regrettably, the PA" — the Palestinian Authority — "and Palestinian terror groups are presenting a real-estate dispute between private parties, as a nationalistic cause, in order to incite violence in Jerusalem," the ministry said in a statement Saturday, two days after anger in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of east Jerusalem began to boil over. Calling the catalyst of all this a 'real estate dispute' is a particularly noxious way to diminish what's actually occurring: Nahalat Shimon, a U.S.-based settler organization, is trying to have Palestinians who have lived in the neighborhood since 1956 evicted."Patrick Kingsley,'Israeli Court Delays Expulsion of Palestinian Families in East Jerusalem,' The New York Times, 9 May 2021 and as an "expulsion", "displacement" or "ethnic cleansing" event and a matter of international law by Palestinians and their supporters, is a long-running legal and political dispute between Palestinians and Israelis over the ownership of certain properties and housing units in Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem. The evictions are considered a contributory cause of the 2021 Israel–Palestine crisis.
It has been described as a microcosm of the Israeli–Palestinian disputes over land since 1948,Seth Frantzman, 9 May 2021, Why the Sheikh Jarrah dispute has captured international attention , The Jewish Chronicle with academic Kristen Alff noting "To describe dispossessions in Sheikh Jarrah as a "real estate" quarrel conceals the true history of land ownership in the regions – which is complicated, disputed and rarely decided in favor of Palestinians." In East Jerusalem, Israel's laws allow Jews to file claims over property held prior to 1948, but reject Palestinian claims over property that they owned prior to 1948 in Israel proper.Evan Gottesman, Forward, 10 May 2021, The fights over Sheikh Jarrah reveal the folly of relitigating Israel's founding According to Middle East Eye, the dispute is part of the Israeli government's Holy Basin settlement strategy.Sheikh Jarrah explained: The past and present of East Jerusalem neighbourhood , Middle East Eye Aryeh King, a deputy mayor of Jerusalem and one of the founders of Ma'ale HaZeitim, an illegal settlement, told The New York Times that the eviction of Palestinian families was "of course" part of a municipal strategy to create "layers of Jews" throughout East Jerusalem.Evictions in Jerusalem Become Focus of Israeli-Palestinian Conflict , 7 May 2021 Many Palestinian families in East Jerusalem have been affected by "forced relocation processes or been involved in lengthy legal procedures to revoke an eviction order".
The property in Sheikh Jarrah in dispute includes the adjacent Shimon HaTzadik/Karm Al-Ja’ouni and Um Haroun (former Nahalat Shimon) compounds to the East and West respectively of the Nablus Road. In the former, the Palestinian residents of Sheikh Jarrah were refugees who received plots of land in a UNRWA lottery, relinquishing in return their refugee documents and accompanying rights. They have no right under Israeli law to repossess their pre-1948 homes in Haifa, Sarafand and Jaffa.Daphna Golan-Agnon, Teaching Palestine on an Israeli University Campus:Unsettling Denial, Anthern Press 2020 p.57. The Palestinian view is that given Sheikh Jarrah's location beyond the Green Line or Israel proper, Israeli courts have no jurisdiction over land disputes in what is occupied territory according to international law, and that the displacement of people in occupied territory is a war crime under the Rome Statute. The United Nations Human Rights Office has said that as Sheikh Jarrah is in East Jerusalem, which is considered occupied territory, international humanitarian law prohibits the confiscation of private property and evictions of Palestinian families could constitute war crimes.
Background In 1876, during the Ottoman Era, the Sephardi Community Council and the Ashkenazi General Council of the Congregation of Israel jointly purchased land that included the Tomb of Simeon the Just and the Cave of the Minor Sanhedrin. The property was registered with the Ottoman authorities in the name of Rabbi Avraham Ashkenazi, for the Sephardic Jews, and Rabbi Meir Auerbach, for the Ashkenazi Jews. The cave tomb of Simeon the Just (or Shimon HaTzadik) was traditionally thought to be the burial of a noted Jewish high priest. According to scholarly consensus, based on an in situ inscription, it is actually the 2nd-century CE burial site of a Roman matron named Julia Sabina.
In 1890 the cornerstone was laid for the construction of a neighborhood called Shimon HaTzadik in the portion belonging to the Sephardic community, east of Nablus Road. In 1891 construction of Nahalat Shimon began to the west of Nablus Road.
Some Palestinians have disputed prior Jewish ownership and have produced Ottoman-era land titles for part of the land. An Israeli court has stated that the document of Jewish ownership was authentic and the Arab documents forged.
In 1947, there were about 100 Jewish houses in the neighborhood. East Jerusalem came under Jordanian rule following the 1948 War. The evacuated Jewish residents were resettled in Palestinian homes in West Jerusalem.Golan-Agnon 2020 p.57.
The Ashkenazi portion of the property south of the tomb remained open space, and in 1956, 28 housing units for Palestinian refugees were constructed there. The Jordanian government agreed with the United Nations Palestinian relief agency UNRWA to house 28 Palestinian refugee families. These Palestinian families had previously lived in Haifa and Jaffa but had been displaced in 1948.
In 1948, approximately 750,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes, and about 400 Palestinian towns and villages were depopulated, in areas which fell under Israeli control. In West Jerusalem the overwhelming mass of the wealthy Palestinian community, some 28,000, of which only roughly 750 (mostly Greeks and Christians) were permitted to remain, fled or were expelled; and their property was ransacked, subsequently confiscated and distributed to Jews. In the same period, during the 1948 War, the residents of the Jewish residents at Shimon HaTzadik and Nahalat Shimon were evacuated after the Jewish Haganah militia, later seconded by the British authorities, asked them to do so for security reasons. Altogether more than 10,000 Jews, including 2000 civilians from the Old City, were forced to leave their homes in Arab-controlled areas and relocate to areas within the Israeli side of the armistice line.Alan Balfour, The Walls of Jerusalem: Preserving the Past, Controlling the Future, p. 142 According to one of the evacuees, Justice Emeritus Michael Ben-Yair, all these Jewish evacuees from Sheikh Jarrah were given Palestinian homes in West Jerusalem in compensation.Daphna Golan-Agnon, Teaching Palestine on an Israeli University Campus: Unsettling Denial, Anthem Press 2020 p. 57: "We were given two apartments and a store in Sheikh Bader in exchange for our assets in Sheikh Jarrah. We were not the only ones who were given alternative housing that had belonged to Arabs who had fled. All residents of the Sheeikh Jarrah/Shimon Hatzadik neighbourhood were given alternative housing in property abandoned by Arabs who fled to East Jerusalem (...) One could say with relative certainty that the number of properties abandoned in west Jerusalem was much higher than the number abandoned in east Jerusalem. They were also, in all likelihood, worth more then, and they certainly are today."Nir Hasson, " Former Attorney General Discovers Settler Group Took Over His Family’s Sheikh Jarrah Home ", Haaretz, 15 June 2021 10,000 mostly fully-furnished Palestinian homes in the western sector of Jerusalem alone were occupied, and their original owners and Palestinians with property in other parts of Mandatory Palestine and what later became Israel are denied the right to reclaim their property.
In a 1987 court decision, the two Jewish trusts who had bought the land in 1876 were recognized as owner of that land, but the Palestinians living there were defined as protected tenants.
In 1993 the two Jewish trusts began filing suits for payment of rental fees. In 2001 the Jerusalem Court accepted the trusts’ demand to evict tenants for non-payment of rent.
Timeline of evictions
Karm Al-Ja’ouni (Shimon HaTzadik) In 2001, Israeli settlers moved into a sealed section of the al-Kurd family's house in the compound of Shimon HaTzadik and refused to leave, claiming the property was owned by Jews. The dispute was heard by the Jerusalem District Court, which ruled in 2008 that the property belonged to the Sephardi Community Committee. The committee transferred the property to a settler organization called "Shimon's Estate". The court also ruled that the Arab families would have protected tenant status as long as they paid rent. However, the al-Kurds refused to pay rent to the settler association, leading to their eviction in November 2008.
The court ruling was based on an Ottoman-era bill of sale. Lawyers for the Jewish families argued that documents from the Ottoman Empire originally used to prove that a Jewish Sephardic organization had purchased the land in question in the 19th century are indeed valid. However, in 2009, after the court hearing had been finalised, the authenticity of these documents was challenged on the basis that the building had only been rented to the Sephardi group. The lawyers for the Palestinians produced documents from Istanbul's Ottoman archives purporting to show that the Jewish organization that claims to own the land only rented it, and as such was not the rightful owner. The al-Kurd family claims that when they pressed the court to look at the new evidence, they were told "it's too late". Moreover, the Palestinian families and their supporters maintained that Ottoman documents that Israel's Supreme Court had validated were in fact forgeries, and that the original ruling and therefore evictions relating to that ruling should be reversed. The lawyer for the Israeli families emphasized that the land deeds were authentic, according to many Israeli courts. The Israeli court decision (resulting in the aforementioned evictions) stated that the document presented by the Palestinian families was a forgery, while the document of Jewish ownership was authentic.
43 Palestinians were evicted in 2002, the Hanoun and Ghawi families in 2008, and the Shamasneh family in 2017.Linah Alsaafin, 'What is happening in occupied East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah?,' Al Jazeera, 1 May 2021. In 2010, the Supreme Court of Israel rejected an appeal by Palestinian families who had lived in 57 housing units who had petitioned the court to have their ownership to the properties recognized.Yitzhak Reiter, Lior Lehrs, 'The Strategic Implications of Jewish Settlement in an Arab Neighborhood in East Jerusalem,' The Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies 2010 pp.1–96 p.6 These petitioners refused to pay rent to the recognised owners and carried out construction on the properties unauthorized by those who the courts had recognized as the owners, and were evicted.