A night in Sheikh Jarrah - An experience of Israels right now most flagrant trespass on international law

It's a difficult experience to sitt face to face with someone who had his whole life turned upside down. On 14 August 2009, I sat with the Palestinian Ghawy Nasser, one of the residents of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem, who told me about his family's tragic history. We're just a few meters from the house that a few weeks ago belonged to the Ghawy family with 38 members. Israeli companies and the ultra-Orthodox Jews have for a long time tried to seize houses in Sheikh Jarrah, but their efforts has recently intensified. Almost a year ago, the Israeli legal system decided Ghawy no longer had the right to his house, instead they gave the ownership to the Israeli settlers. The family refused to move why Israeli police confiscated the house by force. Everything happened on August 2, the Ghawy family had to leave their home in Sheikh Jarrah and has since then lived on the street. The house, which only two weeks ago was theirs, is now inhabited by Israeli settlers and guarded by Israeli security guards paid by the Israeli Ministry of Housing.The house of the Ghawy family

Me and my Italian friend, Armando, listened attentively to what Nasser had to say while we sipped our Arabic coffee. We sit on plastic chairs in the Ghawy famly's i modest establishment on the street in the Sheikh Jarrah. "This is the living room and over there you see the sleeping room" says Nasser in an effort to lighten up the mood when we asked what it's like to live on the street. Furthermore, he describes the long and complex process, the family has undergone. It was not always easy to understand all the details of his story. However, everything began in 1948 when his family fled from Jaffa to Jerusalem after the Nakba. Jordan annexed the West Bank in 1948 and gave recidence for the Ghawy family and other Palestinian refugees in East Jerusalem. After the Six Day War of 1967 Jordan lost control of the West Bank and Israel occupied the area. Since the Six Day War, Israeli stakeholders (Sephardic Jewish Settlers och Oriental Jews Association) say that the family has no legal right to reside there and has therefore raised the question in the Israeli legal system. The Israeli groups argue that the land belongs to them because the area was inhabited by Jewish families before the war 1948. In order to avoid being evicted the Israeli court wanted to have title deeds that shows that the land they live on belongs to them. With the help of lawyers the family successfully managed to produce 12 titles that chronologically describes the ownership from the time Palestine belonged to the Ottoman Empire (found in the central archives in Istanbul) to the current date. The Israeli groups' arguments, that the land previously belonged to jews during the Ottoman Empire period was disproved by the documents from the central archives in Istanbul, which instead showed that the land only been lended to the jews for three years and was never owned by them. The Israeli court system has been playing with the family for decades and now they even have difficulties explaining reason for the verdict that means that the family has to leave their homes even though they have all the appropriate title deeds. For more info about the situation in Sheikh Jarrah please visit StandUpForJerusalem's web page by clicking here.

The Ghawy family

And here we are today. The Ghawy family, the Hanoun family and previously also the al-Kurd family in Sheikh Jarrah have been expelled from their homes. The fact that I think this is wrong and unfair doesn't matter, but what should matter and what should get the international community to act is that all this clearly violates Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which reads:

Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportation of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.

It can't be clearer than that. The Convention is ratified by 194 countries, including Israel. Israel therefore has no right to enter the occupied territories and to seize Palestinian houses because they do not agree to the titles they have in their houses.

The Ghawy familie's "bed room"

Armando and I decided during the day to show our support the Ghawy family and sleep with them on the street. Later in the evening, neighbors and friends of the family dropped a visit to socialize and support them. We started asking around among the other families if they also were in the risk of being evicted from their homes. It turned out that most of them had received a letter from the Israeli court that they had to appear in court in November to defend their homes. Everything is obviously a charade, the Israeli justice system are in these cases a political establishment in which a part of the plan for a Jerusalem free from Palestinians is to be implemented. Otherwise they would not so blatantly ignore international law and year after year ensure that less and less Palestinians can live there.

Depressed because what we had seen and heard, we decided to have an evening stroll around the area to be able to breath a bit. After some 100m we meet Liam Bartlett and his television crew from 60 Minutes Australia, which was in full swing doing a feature on the situation in Sheikh Jarrah. He told me that they interviewed several of the ultra-Orthodox Jews who have settled in Palestinian homes. Their frame of reference was frightening. The settlers had referred to the Torah when the journalist asked them with what right they seize the houses. They use the old religious scriptures as title deeds... how should one interpret an answer like that? How can you find a solution to the conflict here if the State of Israel supports the ultra-Orthodox Jews whose only truth is spelled T o r a h?

Armando and I left the australian tv-crew and felt that the only natural step would be is to find a pub nearby where we could relax a bit before went back to make us ready for bed... on the street.