Evicted in Jerusalem: When the Courts Fail

(Woman ascending the stairs in Jerusalem’s Muslim Quarter Cr: Anonymous)

By: Talya Wintman

New York — About a mile from where I studied at the Hebrew University, 32 members of the Palestinian Sabbagh family will be forcibly evicted from their home in the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.

Media buzz is absent, at best because it has been a slow burn with the eviction of four other families proceeding over years, and at worst because formal property proceedings provide cover for deep injustice. While Israel’s High Court, the country’s supreme judicial body, closed the door to their appeal last year, ambiguity about what part of the property needed to be vacated has granted the family a temporary freeze. Until then, the Sabbagh family, who have lived in this home over six decades, await a final deadline to move out so that a Jewish family can move in.

This is happening throughout Palestinian East Jerusalem. In some neighborhoods, Jewish families employ private security guards to protect them from their Palestinian neighbors. They drive in bulletproof cars between their East Jerusalem homes and central West Jerusalem locations. When their families expand, they build additions with municipal permits that are rarely granted if at all to Palestinian families. And when the communities expand, they start the process all over again. This is the Judaization of East Jerusalem.

Nahalat Shimon, a corporation registered out of Delaware, bought the Sheikh Jarrah property from two Jewish trusts in 2003 with the intent to push Palestinians out of Jerusalem.

According to the High Court, the Sabbagh’s eviction is a foregone conclusion. There is no equivalent right of return of property for Palestinians who owned homes and land in West Jerusalem or elsewhere inside Israel.

After 1948, the Sabbagh family uprooted from their original two-family home in Yaffo, were resettled by UNRWA and the Jordanian Government in Sheikh Jarrah. Hence the eviction from their Sheikh Jarrah home would be the second eviction the family has faced to make room for Jewish families.

Most American Jews I have talked to are dismayed to hear this. They try to litigate the evictions, looking for justification, and when that fails, feign ignorance. It could not possibly just be a land grab on behalf of the settler lobby, they say. The Israeli High Court would strike down the law if it were so egregious.

This is perhaps true for many Israelis as well. They trust decisions made by the High Court. It is not as though the Court has never made a ruling in favor of Palestinians. Israelis feel reassured that in moments of political short-sightedness, there are rational minds on the High Court to supersede anti-democratic laws. However, this neglects the original function of the High Court, which was to uphold the laws of the Knesset rather than check them.

While judicial review takes place, it does not have the formal backing of a constitution, and the Human Dignity Basic Law does not contain the word equality in its text. Ostensibly, the court system is designed to uphold the legislative status quo — with a few notable historic exceptions of activist supreme court justices — which by proxy means indefinite military occupation. If political will is to ever change, direct action is necessary.

Despite the High Court’s ruling on Sheikh Jarrah, continued action is justified. The High Court cannot and is not designed to override property law, however, elected representatives in the legislative body can. Laws are changed through political will, which is created through constituency building and direct action.

(Settlements in the distance on the outskirts of Jerusalem — Cr: Anonymous)

Opposing evictions in Sheikh Jarrah is not a blanket condemnation of the Court, it’s an acknowledgment of where the power lies, and it is essential to the democratic process. Especially when judicial checks are insufficient. 

The government can block these land grabs and limit the funding supporting them on the grounds of public safety and the use of land for public purposes.

Former Attorney General Michael Ben-Yair, whose own family was forced to leave Sheikh Jarrah and relocate to Katamon, when speaking publicly at the home of the Shamasneh family during their eviction proceedings in 2017 said, “If the Israeli government would have acted decently toward all its residents, including you [the Arab residents], it would have appropriated the properties in the neighborhood [from their Jewish owners who lived there before the War of Independence] and given these properties to the Palestinians who live there today....The current Israeli law that enables double compensation only for Jews for [lost] properties in east Jerusalem from the times before 1948 is unjust.”

Since 2009, when Nahalat Shimon removed three Palestinian families from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah, Israelis and internationals have banded together, holding demonstrations in the neighborhood every Friday, which continue to this day.

These efforts have successfully held off evictions until most recently in 2017 with the Shamasneh family, and with the Sabbagh family next.

Exposing the truth and changing public opinion, both in Israel and in the American Jewish community where much of the funding originates, is imperative. Perhaps more useful and productive than fighting Israel’s delegitimization is fighting for justice, a negotiated peace settlement, and Israel’s security with the end of evictions and demolitions once and for all.