Published: 27 July 2021
Last updated: 4 March 2024
Next week Israel’s Supreme Court will decide whether to hear an appeal by Sheikh Jarrah Palestinians against their eviction. Ben Lynfield talks to people on both sides of the dispute
A DAY AFTER being treated in hospital for chronic pulmonary illness, Aref Hammad was back in his home of 65 years in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, trying to rest.
But it won't be for long if Israeli-government backed settlers get their way and evict him, his family and seven other families as part of what observers say is an "unprecedented" escalation of settlement in East Jerusalem, which was captured during the 1967 war and then annexed in contravention of international law.
Rather than targeting individual Palestinian homes for takeover as was the case in the past, the settlers now seem to be setting their sights on entire Arab neighbourhoods.
Sheikh Jarrah is 15 minutes’ walk away from Herod's Gate into the Muslim quarter of the walled Old City, another occupied area which contains Judaism's holiest site, the Temple Mount, also revered by Muslims as the promontory of Al Aqsa mosque, Islam's third holiest shrine.
"Every day I'm in the street because I'm afraid the settlers will do something bad to our neighbourhood,"says 70-year-old Hammad. "I try as an old man to help our community. I can't do a lot of things as an old man. Just I sit outside and show I'm here.
"I can't stay for long outside with the supporters of the families because I need oxygen. I used to need it every couple of days. Now I need it three hours a day," he adds, looking pained.
The Palestinian protest has not been entirely peaceful. In May, around the same time as there were clashes at Damascus Gate in the run up to the Gaza war, Palestinians hurled a number of Molotov cocktails and police responded with sponge-tipped bullets.
