JERUSALEM, Friday, April 9, 2021 (WAFA) – At least nine Palestinians, including a photojournalist, were injured today when Israeli occupation forces assaulted them while they were holding a nonviolent protest in the occupied Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. The protest was held against Israel’s plan to evict dozens of families in the neighborhood in favor of settler organizations.

Israeli police officers attacked the participants with rubber-coated rounds and physically assaulted and beat up many of them, injuring nine of them, including four by rubber-coated bullets, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent (PRC).

Palestinians have been holding protests on a weekly basis against an Israeli plan that could see dozens of families in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, mainly children and women, evicted from their homes.

In February, the Israeli District Court in Jerusalem rejected an appeal by four Palestinian families living in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in occupied Jerusalem against their eviction from their homes for the benefit of Jewish settlers and upheld the eviction order. The court gave the four families until May 2 to implement the eviction decision.

The District Court had also 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.

M.N