10 May, 2016
Jewish fanatic settlers continue Palestinian land-grabs
JERUSALEM, May 9, 2016 (WAFA) – Israeli settlers on Monday raided and took over a Palestinian-owned home in the Old City neighborhood of Jerusalem, claiming it was their property.
Witnesses told WAFA that a group of settlers guarded by policemen broke into a three-storey building owned by local Youzbashi clan.
The seized home overlooks the al-Aqsa Mosque compound and other Islamic and Christian holy sites in the Old City.
To be noted, Israeli settlers have taken over dozens of homes apartments in Jerusalem during the past few years.
The Absentees’ Property Law (1950) is one of Israel’s major legal instruments for seizing Palestinian property,” according to Stop The Wall campaign, a local organization monitoring Israeli violations of Palestinian rights.
“By classifying every citizen or persons present in an “enemy” territory or country as an “absentee” vis-à-vis property in Israel, the law has served to confiscate the land and real e-state left behind by the Palestinians who were forcibly displaced 1948. It is still in effect and used to confiscate Palestinian properties more than six decades later,” the campaign reports.
On February 9, a Jewish settler group attempted to evict a house rented by a Palestinian family in the neighborhood of Aqabat al-Khalidiya in Jerusalem’s Old City, citing that the house belongs to a Jewish family and that settlers have the right to inhabit it instead of a Palestinian family.
The house’s owner, Ahmad Sub Laban, said his family rented the house in 1956 from Jordan’s then Custodian of Enemy Property (CEP), 11 years before Israel occupied the eastern part of Jerusalem. The house was originally owned by Jewish migrants before the CEP assumed control of Jewish-owned property upon the Israeli-Arab war in 1948.
Settlement activities and Israeli settlers in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem are illegal under international law.
Israel Transfers East Jerusalem Arab Land to Settler NGO
JERUSALEM, May 9, 2016 (WAFA) – Israeli authorities have expropriated a Palestinian-owned land in East Jerusalem from its original owners and handed it over to Amana, an organization that works to establish settlements and outposts, Israeli daily Haaretz revealed on Monday.
Some months ago, Haaretz said, Amana began building a large office building on the land for its headquarters. Documents submitted for an administrative petition against the land transfer reveals that the state used strenuous “bureaucratic acrobatics” to deliver land that didn’t belong to it.
The plan was prepared and approved without the family knowing of the expropriation, the daily added. The property map was redrawn to legitimize the expropriation, while related documents were hidden from the owners.
A petition against the illegal expropriation was submitted by the Palestinian owner, but it was rejected by the Jerusalem District Court.
According to Haaretz, Amana, founded by the Gush Emunim religious settlement movement in 1979, is the most important private body for establishing and expanding West Bank settlements.
The company owns Al-Watan, which has been repeatedly involved in deals buying land from Palestinian owners that turned out to be forged.
The Palestinians want their state to include all land captured by Israel in 1967, but some 500,000 Jews now live in more than 200 settlements and outposts in the West Bank – including East Jerusalem.
The settlements are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.
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