The story of the families living on the street outside their house that they were evicted from on 2 August, continues to get worse. The two families - Hanoun and Al Ghawi were both evicted to make room for Israeli Jewish settler families to move in when the courts ruled that the houses should be ‘returned’ to Jewish ownership.The Al Ghawi family was given an order by the police to dismantle the tents they were living in by last Sunday. Today about 80 police and soldiers arrived to pull the tents down. They arrived while the women were making breakfast in the tent. The police surrounded the tent and ordered the women to take their belongings out. Then they tore it down. The children were screaming and the women crying. An eye witness who had been there the whole time said that the soldiers were laughing as they pulled the tent down.
When the police left, the family used a piece of the torn tent to cover the tree for a makeshift shelter and to hold it in place with a pole. Within a few minutes the police came back and tore that down too. Now the family live under the tree with no shelter. Winter is coming, yesterday it rained hard in Jerusalem and the temperature has plummeted.
Last week there were a series of attacks and provocations by the settlers towards the Al Ghawi family. On Shabbat last Friday the settlers came at sunset to sing and dance outside the tent. Someone told me that the Palestinian women took their pots and pans and also started banging them! The previous Tuesday one of the settlers came to the tent and told the family to leave - he told them that it was his house. A fight broke out, the police arrived and arrested one of the Al Ghawi men. He was detained for 48 hours and has been ordered not to go within 1km of his house for 15 days. Now he sleeps in his car down the road. “It’s 2010” he said, “and a lot of us live like monkeys. I just want to go back to my home”.
Another man from the Al Ghawi family was suspected of having a heart attack. He was taken to hospital and when he returned a few days later, the police came to arrest him also. None of the settlers were detained or arrested.
Both the Hanoun and Al Ghawi families have been living in their homes since 1956 when as refugees after the 1948 Nakba (catastrophe), they were given the houses by UNRWA. It’s been a very long story for both the families, with lawyers involved and previous periods of evictions from the houses. They have papers that date back many years that prove this particular land is Arab land. The Municipality of Jerusalem ordered the destruction and confiscation of the tent that had provided shelter to the family since their eviction in early August. Twenty five other families are in similar situations. I spoke to one man who has had his court case postponed from last June until January 2010, for the judge to consider key documents. His family has also been living in the house since 1956 and he will find out in January if he is to face the same fate as the Al Ghawi and Hanoun families.
A few days have passed since I wrote this. Today is Tuesday 3 November. This morning following a court dismissal another family were forced out of a section of their home. 40 settlers accompanied by large private security forces summoned by the settlers, forcefully evicted 30 people from the Al-Kurd family out of their home. The family's belongings were thrown onto the street while the settlers invaded the Al-Kurd home. Later on police forces arrived to protect the settlers and arrested an international activist. The court permitted the settlers to enter the house and take over this section as a part of a forced agreement between the settlers and the family 17 years ago which recognises the settlers ownership of the land due to Jewish ownership prior to 1948. This decision of the court is discriminatory by nature as the Palestinian residents of the neighbourhood are all refugees from the 1948 war but can never reclaim their lands because they are Palestinian.
There is a protest vigil tomorrow but it feels so hopeless…
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