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Finding themselves homeless last August, the Ghawi family had set up a tent outside their old house. This flimsy structure, containing a few foam mattresses and plastic chairs, was the target of the latest Israeli demolition order.
I had just left home this morning when I saw a series of police vehicles turning into my road. I have recently moved to Sheikh Jarrah, a neighbourhood in occupied East Jerusalem where Israel pursues a policy of evicting Palestinians from their homes. I’d been thinking that I was late for work – in fact I was bang on time for a story.
I did a U-turn and followed the police convoy. They were heading towards a Palestinian house that had been the scene of an eviction at the beginning of August. The Ghawi family had been living there for more than 50 years, but an Israeli court ruled that Jews were the rightful owners. So the Palestinians were thrown out onto the street and Jewish settlers moved in.
Finding themselves homeless, the Ghawi family had set up a tent on the pavement opposite their old house. This flimsy structure, containing a few foam mattresses and plastic chairs, was the target of the latest Israeli demolition order.
The police acted with swift, brutal efficiency. Within minutes they had torn down the tent and loaded it, along with its contents, onto the back of a couple of pick-up trucks.
“I will sit on a chair in the street!” shouted Maysoun Al Ghawi, her voice shaking with anger and distress. “With my children, without a tent. Without anything. I will stand opposite my house. I have a right to live here with my children. They stole the house from me by force!”
And this is not an isolated story. The Hanoun family and Al Kurd family have also been dispossessed. And there are other cases in the pipeline. On the pavement, I met Amal Qassem, a neighbour who was watching anxiously. She had been in court the previous day, fighting a legal action by Israeli settlers to grab her home.
“My house is one of 28 houses which are threatened by eviction,” she told me. “I am waiting my turn."
What Israel knocks down, the Palestinians raise up again. No sooner had the police left, than people from the neighbourhood were helping the Ghawi family build a new makeshift shelter.
The next people to show up were a busload of women from the European parliament. They were in town to learn about Israeli evictions and house demolitions. And they had arrived just in time for a first-hand lesson.
“All the international community should be ashamed of what’s happening here,” said Luisa Morgantini, a former vice president of the European Parliament. “We see every day Palestinians being sent out of their homes, houses being demolished, increasing of settlements. It’s really time to end it.”
The settlers inside the Ghawi house had clearly been working their phones, because the police showed up again. An officer in a patrol car used his loud hailer to inform the rapidly growing crowd of Palestinians, parliamentarians, journalists, Israeli peace activists and UN workers that this was an illegal gathering and must disperse within five minutes.
To add insult to injury, the police gave a parking ticket to the bus carrying the ladies from the European parliament.
The deadline passed and the police waded in. Déjà vu: the Ghawi’s new shelter met the same fate as their tent. Torn down and bundled into the back of a police pick-up.
What we are witnessing in Sheikh Jarrah is part of a systematic effort by Jewish settlers – backed up by the courts, the municipality and the police – to tip the demographic balance in East Jerusalem. They are working slowly and patiently, house by house, family by family, to replace Palestinians by Jews.
This happens in broad daylight. The international community knows full well what is going on. Indeed, this particular incident was witnessed by elected representatives of the people of Europe. Yet the Israeli evictions and demolitions in East Jerusalem continue unchecked.
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