Palestine: Sheikh Jarrah residents reject “protected tenants” status offered by Israeli court

The residents of the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood have rejected the Israeli Supreme Courts’ proposal in a statement asserting that they “refuse to compromise” on their rights and “submit to an oppressive agreement.”

The plight of the residents threatened with forced evictions from their homes in occupied East Jerusalem had garnered International furore and protests earlier this year.

The statement asserts that the Israeli Judiciary is steering clear of its duty to adjudicate the case and is forcing the residents to choose between their “dispossession or submitting to an oppressive agreement”. They decode that such terms act as a diversion of the actual issue of the “ethnic cleansing perpetrated by a settler-colonial judiciary and its settlers”, and that the threat of expulsions would still loom despite it.

“We rejected the compromise because we are resilient. We know that this land is ours. The occupation markets itself as being fair, and we are not fine with this narrative. There is never a solution to our benefit that comes from these settler-colonial courts. These courts want us out of our homes. They want to ethnically cleanse us.”, said Palestinian Activist Muna El Kurd.

“Me, my family and my neighbours couldn’t sleep yesterday. We couldn’t sleep at night after the day they presented this proposal to us”, she continues, highlighting the toll of uncertainty that took over their lives.

The proposal was presented during a hearing of the suit seeking their eviction filed by the Israeli settler organisation Nahalat Shimon. It entails that each family should deposit a yearly rent of 2,400 shekels [$750] in the account of the counsel of the Nahalat Shimon Co, to reside in their neighbourhood as “protected tenants” for 15 years, evading the matter of residents’ eviction for a while.

“The ‘compromise’ creates the illusion of the ball in our court, fabricating a framing in which we reject a “generous deal,”” the statement read. 

The residents’ of Sheikh Jarrah called on the international community to respond to the war crimes and the international law violations, diplomatically and with political repercussions, urging them not to neglect the inaction and impunity of the Israeli Occupation when it comes to the plight of Palestinians in Israel.

“We’ve been in Israeli courts for 72 years, but recently we’ve seen great support from the whole world. We are not lying when we say that we depend on the influence of the streets (protests), the people and on International solidarity, if it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t be here today. Even the Israeli supreme court doesn’t know how to take a decision”, added El Kurd.

“Stay with us, dear people, our case is not over yet.”