Teesha
Amidst the violent clashes in East Jerusalem, the Supreme Court of Israel has delayed the hearing which was earlier scheduled for 10th May. The hearing was to determine, whether the order for the eviction of the four Palestinian families from the city of Sheikh Jarrah would be continued or not.
The delay resulted after the Attorney General Avichai Mandelbit’s office asked the court for two weeks period to consider the matter, after the Palestinian families urged him to become a party to the case.
The court granted Mandelbit time until June 8 to consider the same and ordered that the eviction would not take place in this duration.
Justice Yitzhak Amit said a new date would be determined in the next 30 days and until then he ordered a freeze on the decision by the Appellate Court.
The bone of contention behind this upsurge is the scheduled forced eviction of over 70 Palestinians refugees in the coming weeks from Sheikh Jarrah city. The place would be occupied by the Jewish Israelis settlers, who claim it as their ancestral land.
Courts have ruled that the land has been owned by Jewish religious associations before the establishment of Israel in 1948, as reported by Times of Israel.
Tension has escalated since the starting of the holy month of Ramadan. On 8th May, Israeli police blocked several buses of Palestinians headed to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque for Laylat al-Qadr, the holiest night of Ramadan.
Nearly, 90,000 Palestinians attended prayers at the Temple Mount that night. Hundreds of Palestinians complied with the police orders and walked the rest of the way to Jerusalem.
More than 250 Palestinians have been injured over the weekend in clashes with Israeli police. Israel’s act of firing rubber bullets inside the mosque has inculcated condemnations around the globe.
“Violence breeds violence,” Pope Francis told pilgrims at St. Peter’s Square in Rome. “Stop clashes.”
The Israeli settlers are roaming free to evict the Palestinians and bulldoze the neighbourhood to make room for 200 housing units. Their act is backed by the 1970 Israeli law that gives Jewish Israelis the right to reclaim East Jerusalem properties owned by Jews before the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
Palestinians who lost their land do not have the same right, despite the fact that they have inhabited the place since decades.
“Jerusalem is Israel’s capital, and just as every nation builds in its capital and builds up its capital, we also have the right to build in Jerusalem and to build up Jerusalem, that is what we have done, and that is what we will continue to do.” Said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said on 7th May, that any Israeli evictions in East Jerusalem could be considered “war crimes.”
The acts of Israel’s police and government gathered unwanted attention of the militant groups retaliated, “If the aggression against our people in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood does not stop immediately, we will not stand idly by” warned Mohammed Beif, a leader of Hamas’s armed wing.
On 9th May 2021, the Gaza based Islamic militant group Hama by launching several rockets into Israel. The Israeli military struck a Hamas military post in southern Gaza and closed Gaza’s fishing zone in response to “the violence committed against the country’s citizens,” as per the army’s statement.
All the contentions see no end until the government and the court consider the issue regardless of religious or ethnic grounds and put forward a humanitarian gesture.