Published: 30 November 2018
Last updated: 4 March 2024
As it stands, the family, whose forebears fled Jaffa because of the fighting that accompanied Israel's emergence, is now in grave danger of being displaced a second time, this time through court decisions.
A Supreme Court ruling on November 18 rejected their lawyer's request to examine settler ownership claims to the land on which their building stands. The lawyer, Sami Irsheid, said new evidence gleaned from Ottoman Turkish archives undermines the settler claims that the land was Jewish owned before 1948.
The court decision paves the way for the Sabaghs, who have been fighting a legal battle against the settlers since 2010, to receive an eviction notice. The ruling, which said the statute of limitations on the ownership question had expired, also heightens prospects for eviction of thirty families whose nearby homes are on land that has the same legal status as the Sabaghs.
It marks a major advance in settler efforts to capture Sheikh Jarrah, which Palestinians see as a core area of their future capital, near downtown East Jerusalem and just ten minutes’ walk from the old city walls.
"This is unfair and unjust," Mohammed Sabagh, 70, said of the court decision. "The court is Israeli and Jewish, and we know they won't stand by our side even if we have proof that the land doesn't belong to the settlers."
He has lived for 62 years in the family's home directly above a site that is revered as the tomb of the ancient sage Simon the Just. A dignified man who speaks fluent English that he learned in Beirut Arab University, Mohammed, who is now retired, worked over the years as a hospital receptionist, pipe installer and driver.
The court is Israeli and Jewish, and we know they won't stand by our side even if we have proof that the land doesn't belong to the settlers.
The Sabaghs trace their residency in what is now a five-unit home to 1956 when the Jordanian government, in cooperation with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, completed construction of houses in Sheikh Jarrah for Palestinian refugees from Israel's war of independence, known to Palestinians as the Nakba, or catastrophe, when about 700,000 of them were expelled or fled.
The Sabaghs lost two large homes in Jaffa and a great deal of land and were made destitute, living from 1948 to 1956 in a converted garage at a relative's house in Jerusalem, then under Jordanian rule.
"When dad came to Jerusalem, he had nothing. I can't imagine how my dad felt when he lived in a small garage after being so wealthy," said Mohammed's brother, Rabih, 66.
The Jaffa houses were taken over by the Israeli state. And in 1950 the Knesset passed a law specifying that Palestinians who lost property in 1948 cannot get it back. A very different approach prevails when it comes to Jewish property, one that is costing Palestinians in East Jerusalem their homes not only in Sheikh Jarrah but also in the crowded Silwan neighbourhood, where 700 Palestinians now face increasingly likely eviction to make way for settlers.
This, too, is based on law. In 1970, three years after Israel captured East Jerusalem and the West Bank, the Knesset passed legislation enabling Jews who lost property in East Jerusalem in 1948 to reclaim it. It makes no provision for compensating Palestinian residents.
[gallery columns="1" size="large" ids="24679"]
Today, the extended Sabagh family living in the house and its extensions is not well off financially, said Rabih, who resides in the United States but visits annually and came to attend the court case. Its members include construction workers, a cook and a taxi driver, he said.
The settlers trace their claims back to 1876 when a Jewish organization purchased the Simon the Just burial cave and adjacent land. In subsequent years, several Jewish homes were established on the land purchased but most of it remained uninhabited, according to Danny Seidemann, director of the left-leaning Israeli NGO Terrestrial Jerusalem.
Aryeh King, a far-right Jerusalem city councillor and settler leader, told the Emirati newspaper, the National, last year that the settler plan is to have 400 Jewish families living in Sheikh Jarrah within the next 10-15 years. He said settlers would continue to work through the legal system to gain evictions of Palestinians.
Hagit Ofran, who monitors settlements for Peace Now, says the intention is to demolish the houses taken over from Palestinians and build multi-storey apartment buildings for settlers. There are currently ten settler families in Sheikh Jarrah, she said.
But each eviction is devastating. "If the settlers take the house it's a disaster economically," Rabih said. "They've been under economic pressure for years, they are unlikely to get a new place," he said of his relatives. "If they find something, it won't be in Jerusalem," he added.
Khadija Sabagh, Rabih's sister-in-law, who is 55 and has a 14-year-old daughter, said: "I have no other place. There's no alternative. There's no money for that." Khadija is also the daughter of Jaffa refugees.
She became impatient with the questions of a journalist, saying an article won't save her house. "They expelled Ghawi, they expelled Hanun," she said of families that were evicted in 2009. "It will be the same with us. Eviction. No mercy on the child or the infirm."
Rabih took out pictures of one of the Jaffa houses, for decades home to Israeli Jews. "They can have everything they want here if they give me back the property in Jaffa," he said.
But he knows that will never happen. "It's unfair, it's not just at all," he says. "They say 'we are a democratic country.' Well if you treat me equally like everyone else, I'll say 'yes you're a democratic country'. But if you treat me differently, what democracy are you talking about?"
READ MORE
Ireland advances bill criminalising sale of goods made in settlements (Times of Israel)
Netanyahu reassures Likud that Bedouin village will be destroyed ‘very soon’ (Times of Israel)
Main photo: Rabih Sabagh (Ben Lynfield)
