The Struggle for a Home

There is nothing worse in this world than having your home taken away. There is nothing worse than seeing your house being destroyed on the reason that it does not belong to you, when your family has been living in that house for years and years.

But this is a fact happening in the occupied Palestinian territories, it is happening to Palestinian people.

In the West Bank and in East Jerusalem there are 500,000 Jews who live on taken by Israel in the 1967 war. They are grouped in 120 settlements that are official and some 100 outposts. These are not “allowed” by the Israeli government, but so far they are provided with water and electricity. The settlements are considered legal by the Israeli government, while the International Court and the European Union have deemed them to be illegal according to the international law. Under the Road Map Israel has agreed to stop settlement activity but according to an Israeli human rights (Yesh Din), 75 per cent of the settlements were constructed without proper permits in the West Bank. Israel also committed itself to destroy the outposts built up since 2001 but so far it seems that 50 outposts have been set up.

According to Amnesty International the settlements violate Palestinian human rights through discrimination (such as in the infrastructure, access to roads, locations and vital resources.)

The only settlements that have been abandoned were those from the Gaza Strip but we all know that situation there did not improve either.

After the 1967 war, starting from 1982, Israeli settlements started to demand rent from the Palestinian families of Sheikh Jar rah neighbourhood and because many of them refused to pay they got evicted.

At the beginning of this week two Palestinian families got evicted from their homes in East Jerusalem. The International community condemned these actions that do not respect the Geneva Convention on occupied territory, but as the Israeli Prime Minister said, the construction needs to continue to cope with the "natural growth" of the settlements’ populations.

The Geneva Convention on occupied territory states that occupying authorities, have to maintain “the geographic and demographic characteristics of occupied East Jerusalem".

There are reports that the Jerusalem municipality is planning to create 150 more housing units and a synagogue in Sheikh Jar rah neighbourhood. The two families who got evicted from here were living in this neighbourhood since 1956.

The investment company that plans to demolish the 28 Palestinian homes and build 200 settlement units bought the land from the settler associations whose ownership right was supposed to be removed by the Israeli land registration department. In 2006 a court decided that the settler organisations did not have any rights on the land.

East Jerusalem has been annexed by Israel after the 1967 Six Days War and declared its capital, but the international community has not recognized it.