REGARDING THE JERUSALEM EVICTIONS, HAS ISRAEL FINALLY GONE TOO FAR?

August 4, 2009 at 08:06 (Corrupt Politics, Current Affairs, Ethnic Cleansing, Illegal Evictions, Israel, Occupation, Palestine, Status of Jerusalem, zionist harassment)

Condemnations are rolling in concerning the illegal evictions of Palestinians in Occupied East Jerusalem. Consensus seems to be that these actions ‘were totally unacceptable’

  

Slowly but surely the world seems to be waking up to to the reality of the ugliness and danger of zionism. Israel has literally gotten away with worse crimes since its inception as a state, most recently in Gaza earlier this year. The silence from the world is still deafening regarding the war crimes committed there. 

 

Hopefully, these condemnations will be followed up by actions and not just filed away in the ‘circular file’ as too often happens. It is time for the world to finally put a stop to the destruction of the Palestinian people. It won’t happen on its own.

 

Here are reports from various news agencies….  they are followed by a report on the actual situation…. 

 

 

From Maan News Agency…   The EU’s Swedish Presidency condemned on Monday Israel’s expulsion of two Palestinian families from their East Jerusalem homes the previous day as “illegal” and “unacceptable.”The Presidency “recalls that house demolitions, evictions and settlement activities in East Jerusalem are illegal under international law.” 

 

From HaAretz… The United States and the United Nations sharply condemned the eviction of two Palestinian families from their homes in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah and their replacement with Jewish families on Sunday.

  

From BBC News… “I deplore today’s totally unacceptable actions by Israel,” the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Robert H Serry said. “These actions are contrary to the provisions of the Geneva Conventions related to occupied territory.

 

Even Hillary Clinton, in what appeared to be a rare sober moment commented… U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday criticized Israel for the eviction two Palestinian families from an Arab neighborhood in east Jerusalem, calling the move “deeply regrettable”.

  

According to a CNN report … Israel moved to defend itself in the face of international criticism Monday over its eviction of dozens of Palestinian families from a neighborhood of Jerusalem they have lived in for generations.

 

 

 

Left-wing Israeli activists protest against the eviction of Palestinians from their homes in east Jerusalem. 

“I think a lot of the criticism is simply not fair,” said Mark Regev, a government spokesman, who described the dispute as a legal one between two private parties over who had title to a property in East Jerusalem.

In the court action, a settler group sued claiming the Palestinians had violated an agreement under which they were allowed to live in the houses.

“As you know, the Israeli court system is independent and professional,” Regev said, referring to the Supreme Court’s decision that paved the way for the evictions. “Many times it goes on the Palestinian side if they think that’s where the justice is and, in this case, they ruled in favor of the Jewish side.”

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 Ibn Ezra posted the following….  

 

Palestinians out, Jews in

 

They are now living on the streets, homeless. Just a week ago they were living inside their home and now there are Jewish settlers inside, exhibiting not the least bit of remorse for the homeless family just outside. The Hanoun family’s furniture was seized by Israeli forces and they are now responsible for paying the storage and mover fees. Meanwhile, the Jewish settlers are living with round-the-clock security, not allowing anyone near. At one house, the police actually had the nerve to tell us not to film too close, as we should respect the privacy of the new residents.

This is just one of several plans by various real estate groups such as Nahalat Shimon International and American businessmen such as Irving Moskowitz, to populate the areas surrounding the Old City with Jewish strongholds that sever Palestinian territorial contiguity in East Jerusalem. This prejudices any final resolution in which East Jerusalem would be the Palestinian capital. It is also in clear breach of Israel’s commitment under the Road Map. But these operations are backed by the Israel Lands Administration, the Jerusalem Municipality and the Israeli government, who are all working together to undermine any possibility for a two-state solution and are blatantly infringing on the basic human rights of the residents of what they deem to be the “united Jerusalem.”