The evictions have been condemned by the United Nations, the Palestinians and also the UK government.

The US said the evictions were not in keeping with Israel's obligations under the so-called "road map" to resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

The operation to evict the 53 Palestinians in the Sheikh Jarrah district of the city was carried out before dawn on Sunday by police clad in black riot gear.

Originally posted by Sliadon
reply to post by Monte-Carlo

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Any chance you could provide us with some information about said person? I have not heard anything about said individual.

-Sliadon

DUBAI/CAIRO (Al Arabiya)

A rightwing Israeli organization plans to coordinate the purchase of dozens of properties in Jordan by European Jews, the group's head said on Monday while an Israeli paper reported possible U.S. fund cuts to Israel.

The Israel Land Fund, which promotes Jewish construction in Jerusalem and has bought land and dozens of houses in occupied Palestinian territory in the West Bank, is now eyeing property once owned by Jews in neighboring Jordan, its chairman Arieh King told AFP.www.alarabiya.net...

The inability of the Haganah to protect Jewish civilians during the 1929 riots led Jewish Polish immigrants who supported Jabotinsky to break away from the Labor-dominated Haganah. They were members of Betar, an activist Zionist movement founded in 1923 in Riga, Latvia, under the influence of Jabotinsky. The first Betar congress met at Danzig in 1931 and elected Jabotinsky as its leader. In 1937, a group of Haganah members left the organization in protest against its "defensive" orientation and joined forces with Betar to set up a new and more militant armed underground organization, known as the Irgun. The formal name of the Irgun was the Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military Organization), sometimes also called by the acronym, Etzel, from the initial letters of the Hebrew name. The more extreme terrorist group, known to the British as the Stern Gang, split off from the Irgun in 1939. The Stern Gang was formally known as the Lohamei Herut Israel (Fighters for Israel's Freedom),www.country-data.com...

Originally posted by mattpryor
Well, how about a bit of context?

This housing complex is in the Sheik Jarra district of East Jerusalem, where there was a large Jewish community prior to the anti-Jewish riots in 1929. The home was originally Jewish, but its inhabitants were chased off in the above riots. Arab families then proceeded to squat on the property, without purchasing it.

Jordan then proceeded to annex East Jerusalem in 1950 and occupied it until 1967. During that time Jews were barred from that part of the city, homes were taken and synagogues were destroyed.

Now, in spite of the fact that documentation exists to prove that Jews had the original deeds to the property, Jewish groups legally re-purchased it from the Hezaji family. However, under pressure from the Palestinian Authority, the Hezaji family denied this (in spite of documentary evidence that the sale went through) - as I have pointed out before it is illegal for a Palestinian to sell land to a Jew and the penalty is death.

The courts ruled twice that there was little doubt that the property belonged to Jews. This is the result.

Bad luck for the squatters, but in the end this is a fairly mundane property dispute.

Originally posted by mattpryor
reply to post by 3DPrisoner

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So we're back to the Zionists = Nazis argument again?

I've read a bit more about this case, and I've tried to summarize it below.

Jordan invaded East Jerusalem in 1948 and seized ownership of the land. Jordan then made a deal with the UNRWA who built the housing compound in 1959. The intention was the let them to 27 Palestinian families for a nominal rent for three years, and then ownership would be transferred to the families. The ownership was never transferred (not sure why), and so when Israel retook the area in 1967 control of the land was transferred to an organisation called the Israeli Custodian for Absentee Property (i.e. property that Jordan had sat on and original ownership was unclear).

In 1972 two organisations - Sephardic Community Committee and Knesset Israel Committee - went to court to get ownership transferred to them based on pre-1948 deeds. They then sold the property on to Shimon International in 2003 (I think).

Various court orders, attempts to evict families for non payment of rent, etc, take place between then and now. It gets a bit complicated. Some excellent research has been done here.

Ultimately this does seem to be a case of big business versus the little guy, and I agree definitely doesn't help to repair the damage between these two communities. All seems (legally) above board though, I don't have a problem with the ruling itself.

And to the above poster, if I'd been living in a property for that long and knowingly not paid any rent, then yes I'd expect to get evicted at some point.

I wonder why the UNRWA didn't transfer ownership when they were supposed to, would have saved all this hassle.