JERUSALEM, August 9, 2015 (WAFA) – A Jewish organization handed the Sarhan family from Jerusalem a judicial order to evict their three homes and a land they own, under the pretext that Jewish individuals own the property.

According to Wadi Hilweh Information Center (WHIC), the Ateret Cohanim Jewish organization asked Sarhan family to leave the three homes and abandon a land of their own to the Jewish group, saying the property belongs to three Yemenite Jews who lived there before 1948. The organization claimed it won an Israeli judicial order granting it the ownership of the three homes and land.

The homes are shelter to 10 Palestinians from the Sarhan family, who has been there for more than 80 years, according to WHIC.

It said the homes are located within the Ateret Cohanim master plan for settlement activity in Silwan; the Jewish group targets to take over a five-dunum and 200-meter land in the area which houses some 35 buildings with about 80 families.

There are uncountable methods in which Jewish groups take over Palestinian real estate in East Jerusalem.

The incident came only a few days after Israeli police asked two East Jerusalem Palestinian families from the Abu-Nab family to leave their homes, under the pretext of absentee ownership.

A few days ago, Israeli police asked Sabri Abu-Nab and Abdullah Abu-Nab, two Jerusalemite Palestinians, and their families to leave their homes before August 11, citing that the two properties are owned by “absentees”.

Jewish settler organizations claimed the two homes are located on the site of an abandoned Jewish synagogue.

Also on February 9, the Ateret Cohanim organization attempted to evict a house rented by a Palestinian family in Jerusalem’s Old City, citing that the house belongs to a Jewish family and that settlers have the right to inhabit it instead.

For years, Israel instituted a series of mandatory laws, regulations and policies to legalize the confiscation of Palestinians’ lands and property and prevent them from returning to their homes.

Palestinians’ land was deemed “absentee property” based on the 1950 Absentee Property Law and the control of the land was transferred to the government and semi-governmental agencies, such as the Jewish National Fund and Israel’s Land Administration for the benefit of Jewish Israelis.

Under this law, Palestinian refugees and the internally displaced are regarded as “present absentees”, designations that authorized the confiscation of their land. The implication of this was a major loss of Palestinians’ land.

Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign says that, “By classifying every citizen or persons present in an “enemy” territory or country as an “absentee” vis-à-vis property in Israel, the law has served to confiscate the land and real estate left behind by the Palestinians who were forcibly displaced 1948,”

In 1967, most Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian Territory (oPT) de facto became “absentees” with regard to their property in East Jerusalem, which was unilaterally and illegally annexed by Israel.

M.N/M.H