All that is missing is a can of gasoline and matches at the table that Itamar Ben-Gvir set up on Thursday, May 6, on a sidewalk in Sheikh Jarrah, a neighborhood in East Jerusalem. At the end of the month of Ramadan, the supremacist Jewish deputy, newly elected to the Israeli Parliament, defender of the most violent settlers in the country, came to challenge the Palestinian inhabitants at the hour of the breaking of the fast, under high police protection.
It was not lacking: chairs have been stolen. Cars were set on fire. The police charged until late at night in these alleys, which nevertheless have everything, in normal times, of an enchanting haven. It is a tree-lined valley, which sinks between two heights of the Palestinian part of Jerusalem. A maze of small houses and gardens where fruit trees provide shade, dotted with pines and tall palm trees. For decades, around 20 of these homes have been the subject of a legal battle between their residents and the settler movement, which has sparked local protests these days, as Israel’s Supreme Court is due to render a ruling on Monday. much awaited opinion.
On Thursday, four Palestinian families refused an agreement with the district court that would have allowed them to stay in their homes, on condition that they recognize that their homes belong to a settler association, Nahalat Shimon, and pay token rent. Monday, the Supreme Court must decide to authorize an appeal procedure, or to order their deportation. Since 2008, ten families have already had to leave. Three others are waiting for a deportation date to be served on them in August. In all, 70 families are at risk.
“Injustice written into the judicial system”
“So what happened in court?” “ Thursday afternoon, on the southern slope of the valley, a neighbor calls out to Abdel Fattah Skafi, 71, from the window of his home. ” We wait “, he grumbles. The building that Mr. Skafi shares with his three sons and their eight children is one of those on which justice must rule. This distinguished old man, with a long, lean body, walks up a tiny alley in his shirt sleeves, pointing one by one to the houses already seized, where settlers are installed who surround his own.
Mr. Skafi was born in Jerusalem. During the 1948 war, his family was evacuated from the “German colony” to the south, emptied by Israel of its Arab population. In 1956, they tore up the papers attesting to their refugee status, when they, like 28 other families, were assigned a house in Sheikh Jarrah – 60 m2 terraced in the olive trees -, financed and built by the United Nations Office for Palestine Refugees in the Near East and the Jordanian monarchy, then sovereign in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
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