Palestine calls ICC to take clear stand against Israel’s actions in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood

Ramallah (QNN)- Palestinian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates, Riyad Al-Maliki, sent a letter to the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Fatou Bensouda regarding Israel’s actions against the Palestinian people in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in occupied Jerusalem.

In the letter, Malki called on ICC to take a clear and public stand against crimes perpetrated by the occupation state of ‘Israel’ against the Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.

The Ministry condemned the decision of the Israeli Supreme Council yesterday over the case of Sheikh Jarrah as an unacceptable and inadmissible decision that completely contradicts international law, particularly as it gives settlers the right to their claims that were based on false grounds and forged papers.

It stressed that such decision constitutes a flagrant and serious violation that equates between the executioner and the victim, and reveals the extent of the court’s involvement in legitimizing and covering the violations and crimes of the occupation and settlers in their theft of land and its public conspiracy against the Palestinian people, specifically in the occupied city of Jerusalem.

Dozens of Palestinians are facing imminent eviction from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in the occupied Jerusalem, in a move to force them out and replace it entirely with an Israeli settlement.

The Jerusalem District Court ruled at least six families must vacate their homes in Sheikh Jarrah on Sunday, despite living there for generations, to make way for a new Israeli settlement known as Shimon HaTsadiq.

However, the Court on Sunday gave the Palestinian families until Thursday to reach a deal with Israeli settlers regarding the ownership of their homes.

The deal proposed by the court requires the Palestinian families to pay the Israeli settlers to rent their homes until the current owners pass away and then assign the properties to the settlers, not to their heirs.

The families refused this proposal, considering it a recognition of the claimed demands of the settlers.

In February, the Israeli District Court in Jerusalem rejected an appeal by four Palestinian families living in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood against their eviction from their homes. The court upheld the eviction order, and it gave the four families until May 2 to implement the eviction decision.

The same court ruled seven other families should leave their homes by August 1.

A plan for the settlement, consisting of 200 housing units on 18 dunums, has already been submitted to the Israeli municipality in Jerusalem.

In total, 58 people, including 17 children, are set to be forcibly displaced to make way for Israeli settlers.

In 1972, several Israeli settler organisations filed a lawsuit against the Palestinian families living in Sheikh Jarrah, alleging the land originally belonged to Jews.

These groups, mostly funded by donors from the United States, have waged a relentless battle that resulted in the displacement of 43 Palestinians in 2002, as well as the Hanoun and Ghawi families in 2008 and the Shamasneh family in 2017.

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