SHEIKH JARRAH: On August 2, the Hanoun and al-Ghawe families together with their Palestinian, Israeli and international supporters will mark the first anniversary of their eviction from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem. At 10:00 there will be a gathering and prayer, followed by a march to the Jerusalem municipality. A community dinner will be held in the evening followed by an all-night vigil calling for an end to the ethnic cleansing which the Israeli legal system supports. The eviction of the two families at 5:30 in the morning on August 2nd 2009 caused international outcry, and was condemned by the UN, as well as the American and British consulates. Since then both families have maintained a presence outside their houses which are occupied by extremist Israeli settlers who moved in on the same day that Israeli police evicted the Palestinians. The al-Kurd family remain but the front part of their home is occupied by settlers. They and their neighbors face daily verbal harassment and physical violence from the settlers. The anniversary falls a few days after another Palestinian family were evicted from their home under similar circumstances, and the property, near Herod's Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem, occupied in the same manner by Israeli settlers. The Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood – a particularly sensitive neighborhood due to its proximity to the Green Line – in East Jerusalem was built by the UN and Jordanian government in 1956 to house Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war. However, with the start of the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem, following the 1967 war, settlers began claiming ownership of the land the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood was built on. Stating that they had purchased the land from a previous Ottoman owner in the 1800s, settlers claimed ownership of the land. In 1972, settlers successfully registered this claim with the Israeli Land Registrar. Israel captured east Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day War and later annexed it in a move not recognized by the international community. It sees all of Jerusalem as its “eternal, undivided” capital and does not consider construction in East Jerusalem to be settlement activity. The Palestinians want to make the east of the city — home to some 200,000 Jewish Israelis and 268,000 Palestinians — the capital of their future state. PSCC
