JERUSALEM, Tuesday, February 16, 2021 (WAFA) - The Israeli District Court in Jerusalem last night rejected an appeal by four Palestinian families living in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem against their eviction from their homes for the benefit of Jewish settlers and upheld the eviction order, reported Wadi Hilweh Information Center.

The court gave the four families until May 2 to implement the eviction decision.

Wadi Hilweh quoted the families’ lawyer, Sami Irsheid, saying the District Court upheld the October ruling of the Magistrates Court in favor of evicting Skafi, Kurd, Jaouni, and Qassem families from their homes following a lawsuit filed by Israeli settlers claiming that the land where the houses are located was owned by Jews prior to the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that ended in Israel occupying most of Palestine and displacing three-quarters of its citizens who became refugees until today.

Irsheid said settler organizations, which claimed ownership of the land where the homes are located in what is known as the Karm al-Jaouni area in Sheikh Jarrah, have registered it in the Israeli lands department as their own.

The District Court refused to allow discussion of ownership of the land despite attempts by the lawyers to prove that the settlers do not own the land on which the housing project was built in 1956 by the Jordanian government and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) for the Palestinians displaced following the Israeli occupation in 1948.

The families plan to appeal their case to the Israeli High Court.

More than 80 British parliamentarians representing all parties, in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, recently wrote in a letter to the British Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, that the British government must do everything in its power to prevent the mass/forced evictions and dispossession of Palestinian families in occupied East Jerusalem, making a case for the Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.

M.K.