OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Twenty-two Palestinians were wounded in overnight clashes with Israeli occupation forces in annexed east Jerusalem, the
Red Crescent said Thursday, as tensions
flare over a controversial land rights case.
اضافة اعلان
Israeli occupation forces confirmed 11 arrests in the latest unrest to rock the Sheikh Jarrah
neighborhood near Jerusalem's walled Old City, where land disputes between
Palestinians and Jewish settlers have fueled hostility for years.
Palestinian protests, which began late Wednesday, continued into the early
hours.
The legal case centres on the homes of four Palestinian families on land
claimed by Jews.
Earlier this year, a Jerusalem district court ruled the homes legally
belonged to the Jewish families, citing purchases decades ago.
The Jewish plaintiffs claimed their families lost the land during the war
that accompanied Israel's creation in 1948, a conflict that also saw hundreds
of thousands of Palestinians displaced from their homes.
The Palestinian families implicated in the case have provided evidence that
their homes were acquired from Jordanian authorities who controlled east
Jerusalem from 1948 to 1967.
Amman has intervened in the case, providing documents to support the
Palestinian claims.
Israel seized east Jerusalem in 1967 and later annexed it, in a move not
recognised by most of the international community.
The district court ruling infuriated Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah who
viewed it as a further step in what they see as a Jewish settler effort to
drive Arabs out of east Jerusalem.
Weeks of clashes that have seen Israeli occupation forces use skunk water cannons.
'We reject this'
Israel's Supreme Court has ordered the sides to seek a compromise.
Sami Irshid, a lawyer for the Palestinians, said the Nahalat Shimon settler
movement proposed that one member of each concerned Palestinian family be
recognised as a "protected tenant."
That would temporarily delay eviction until the protected tenant died, at
which point the home would return to Nahalat Shimon, Irshid said.
"We reject this completely," Mona al-Kurd, one of the Palestinian
residents told AFP.
"The settlers want us to recognise their property rights, it is
impossible."
Yehonatan Yosef, an activist with Nahalat Shimon, accused the Palestinian
families of rejecting "any compromise."
"It's their problem," he said, noting that if the Supreme Court
ruled in the settlers' favour, the Jewish families would do what they wished
with each plot.
The Supreme Court has indicated that if the sides cannot reach a compromise,
it will rule on whether the Palestinians can appeal the district court
decision.
An appeal process could take years.
Mohammed Deif, the reclusive leader of the military wing of Palestinian
Islamist group Hamas, issued a rare public warning on Tuesday, saying Israel
would pay a "high price" over the Sheikh Jarrah dispute.
The Palestinians claim east Jerusalem as their future capital, while Israel
regards the entire city as its "undivided capital."
Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Maliki sent a letter to the
International Criminal Court urging it to "to take a clear and public
stand against crimes perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinian people in
Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood."
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