Eviction, Gentrification, and Colonization in East Jerusalem

The delegation joined local and international activists in Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem to resist the Sabbagh family’s pending eviction from their home that would displace 40 members of the Palestinian family.

The Sabbagh family is one of at least 180 Palestinian families in East Jerusalem threatened with eviction by Israeli authorities.

As we marched peacefully to the Sabbagh home, Israeli police and occupying forces surround us and began to forcefully remove all the Palestinian flags we were carrying. They did so often with force and with pushing and intimidation. A local settler joined in the pushing of our peaceful activists.

All this in what is supposedly called a “democracy”! This is a racist settler-colonial state set on the removal of all Arabs in order to secure this land only for Jews. It is illegal and more important it is immoral!

Efforts to displace the Sabbagh family come in the context of Israel’s unlawful annexation of occupied East Jerusalem and internationally condemned practices that include the forcible transfer of Palestinian families and settlement expansion throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories. I

Israel’s unilateral annexation and related efforts to alter the character and status of occupied East Jerusalem, including by population transfer, have profound implications for the future status of the city and have been deemed null and void by the UN Security Council. These practices and policies by successive Israeli governments amount to flagrant violations of international law including international humanitarian law (IHL), as noted in United Nations Security Council resolutions 478 (1980) and 2334 (2016).

Forcibly transferring members of an occupied population is recognized as a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention, potentially giving rise to individual criminal responsibility.

Read more here where over 80 International NGOs call on Israel to halt these actions here.