Over 1,500 Palestinians from neighborhoods in Jerusalem are facing threat of forced displacement and home demolitions by Israeli authorities. Children make up a large percentage of the families threatened with homelessness.
Recently Israeli courts have ruled in favor of Jewish settlers and given four families in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood until May to leave their homes. In the Silwan neighborhoods of Al Bustan and Batin al Hawa, a total of 21 families are facing home demolition as soon as May 11th to make way for an allegedly bible-inspired ‘King David Park’ tourist site.
This is part of Israel’s larger plan of racist colonial expansion throughout East Jerusalem and the West Bank, forcibly displacing Palestinian families from their land and homes and replacing them with illegal Israeli settlements.
Two of the primary settler organizations driving these evictions, Nahalat Shimon International and Ateret Cohanim, respectively are registered and have tax-deductible charity status in the United States, from where they receive the majority of their funding.
“What we are witnessing in Sheikh Jarrah is Israel’s attempt to erase the Palestinian presence from our native city in real time,” says Mohammed El-Kurd, whose family is among those set to be forcefully evicted in May. “This fate of dispossession looms over much of my neighborhood. Our lives are consumed by the anxiety of living on the brink of homelessness.”
Take action: call on the U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to demand an end to Israel illegal evictions of Palestinians and demolitions of their homes.
