60,000 Palestinians at risk in Jerusalem, UN warns

A report published Friday by a United Nations agency has warned that the problems facing the people of Silwan, who are facing eviction from their homes, are replicated throughout East Jerusalem. At least 60,000 out of the estimated 225,000 Palestinians in East Jerusalem are at risk of having their homes obliterated because they have been deemed illegal by Israeli officialdom, the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) stated. Some 90 Palestinian buildings were demolished in 2008 alone, uprooting about 400 people. All this destruction is being wrought as part of a systematic policy of ensuring that the entire city of Jerusalem falls into Israeli hands, even though a raft of UN resolutions have insisted there is no legal validity to building settlements in East Jerusalem. To date one-third of East Jerusalem has been expropriated by Israel and almost 200,000 settlers housed. A makeshift tent of black net walls connected to a tarpaulin roof with nails and timber has become the nerve centre of a struggle to save 1,500 Palestinians in East Jerusalem in immediate danger of having their homes destroyed. Fakhri Abu Diab has lived here in the Silwan district all 47 years of his life but has been told that he and his family must leave so that a plan to use Biblical archaeology for political ends can be executed. According to the municipality of Jerusalem, 88 houses must be demolished to extend the nearby City of David, a park honouring the king reputed to have conquered the city three millennia ago. The Israeli flag that rolls down the facade of a gleaming block of apartments on the hill overlooking the protest tent signifies the local authority's real intentions, Diab believes. Whereas the state has spared no expense providing armed security for the Israeli settlers who have moved into the building, the Arab community who had been here beforehand lacks a secondary school and other essential services. "We know the municipality wants to bring settlers here," said Diab. "They want the land without us, without Palestinians." Like many of his neighbours, Diab lives in a house that was built before Israel seized East Jerusalem in 1967. "We have been here for many generations," he said. "I have no other place to go." A short stroll from the American Colony, a family-run hotel that seeks to recreate the ambience of the early 20th century, the residents of the Sheikh Jarrah district are preparing for the next wave of evictions. In 1972 two organisations representing Israeli settlers convinced their country's land registrar that 28 dunums (28,000 squared metres) here should be registered in their name. In the living room of Maher Hanoun's house, political activists from Scotland and the Czech Republic sip coffee and smoke cigarettes. Hanoun has long refused to pay the rent demanded by the settler organisations. Last year this father of five was imprisoned for not complying with the terms of an eviction order. "Many times the lawyers for the Israeli settlers have offered us a lot of money," he said. "It is not a matter of money. Here is the house where I was born and my kids were born. After they evacuate us, they will build 250 apartments for settlers." Hanoun, who is embroiled in a protracted court battle, vows to continue resisting. "We are not fighting with weapons," he said. "We are fighting with our bodies and our voices." Like Hanoun, the Al-Kurd family lived in a house built as part of a project implemented jointly by the Jordanian government and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). The project was designed to accommodate 28 Palestinian refugee families who fled from their homes during the violence of 1948, a period which the state of Israel considers a war of independence but which Palestinians label the 'nakbah' (catastrophe). In November last year, Israeli soldiers forced the Al-Kurds out of their home. Later that month Mohammad Al-Kurd, also known as Abu Kamel, died from a massive heart attack that locals attribute to shock. In the 1990s, pressure exerted by Madeleine Albright, then U.S. secretary of state, led to the freezing of work on an Israeli settlement in Ras Al-Amud, another part of East Jerusalem. Although the construction work resumed after she left office, human rights activists cite it as an example of what can be achieved on the rare instances when Israel is challenged in strident terms by its chief ally. So far the current head of U.S. diplomacy, Hillary Clinton, has only delivered a mild rebuke to the expansion of settlements by describing them as "unhelpful". In a leaked internal document, the European Commission went further earlier this year by contending that Israel's activities in and around Jerusalem "constitute one of the most acute challenges" to the prospect of an eventual peace accord with the Palestinians. Jeff Halper from the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions said that this was the second such report that the European Union's executive arm has drawn up in recent years. Yet when it made similar observations in a previous report, no follow-up action was taken. Nevertheless, Halper voiced optimism that the election of Barack Obama as U.S. President and the international revulsion at Israel's attacks on Gaza in December and January may prompt both the U.S. and the EU to demand genuine change in Israeli conduct. "People are beginning to speak out in ways that they haven't done before," he said. "It is too early to say if this is the beckoning of a new era or just a passing phenomenon."