Israeli Violations in Jerusalem

The Israeli occupation authorities continued to commit more war crimes against the occupied Palestinian territories and against the Palestinian citizens. In the Jerusalem District, serious and gross violations of human rights were committed which are incompatible with the provisions of international law and rules of international humanitarian law, and the International Bill of Human Rights. In this report, the National Coalition for the Defense of the Rights of Palestinians in Jerusalem, in cooperation with the Jerusalem Center for Democracy and Human Rights, and the Land Research Center, documented these violations during the month of June 2007. The following is a summary of the report.

Action	Numbers
1. Home Demolitions	8
2. Fines, Notifications, Property Take-Over, Property Raids	28
3. Property Destruction	1
4. Land Confiscation	2
5. Apartheid Wall Impact	2
6. Checkpoints, Barriers, and Sieges	2
7. Property Raids and Shutdowns	8

One: Land confiscation, Land bulldozing, settlement expansion, and continuous building of the apartheid wall in Occupied Jerusalem

Shu’fat and its Refugee Camp: On May 31^st Israeli bulldozers and other drilling equipments dismantled installations on land leased to the Jerusalem Electricity Company since the mid-1980s to store electricity poles and other equipments, an alternative to the land confiscated previously for the construction of Road No. 1, leading to the settlement of "Pisgat Ze'ev", in order to build a new border crossing that will replace the checkpoint at the Shu’faat refugee camp entrance, north of Jerusalem.

The Jerusalem municipality in 1985 had confiscated a land area belonging to the Jerusalem Electricity Company, on which the Company had its generators since the 1950s, for the construction of a bypass road from Jerusalem to the settlement of Pisgat Zeev on the villages of Shu'fat, Beit Hanina, and Hizma. The municipality at the time refused to give alternative land to the one seized, but allowed the company to use about 5 dunums of land confiscated from its Shu’fat owners – brothers Fawzi and Mohammed Shtaiwi – under the pretext of public interest. The company used it to store poles and other company equipment for an expensive lease.

Wadi Hilweh – Silwan: The Jerusalem Municipality dropped written notification messages in front of the houses of many land owners in the area in the Silwan Wade Hilweh neighborhood signed by the mayor, informing them that the land within basin 3012, numbers 15, 4, 45, 39; the plots of land within the basin 30124, which figures 18.17.22, with interim order from the municipality, will be used for car parking in what the letter called Upper Silwan (“David City”). The order was signed on 26/03/2007 and found by the owners of the land in front of their homes on 18 and 19 June 2007, with a map showing the location of nine land properties, which lie along the Wadi Hilweh street, owned by: Khalil Saleh Abdel Rahman Abbasi, Alhaji Ahmad Sulayman Qara’in, Mohamed Ahmed Mohamed Moussa “Al Agha”, the Orthodox Patriarchate, Mahmoud Attallah Lutfi, Hilweh Hussein, and Khalil Mohammed Attallah Lutfi.

Al-Walajeh: Israeli teams began surveying the route of the wall at the beginning of June 2007, the number of surveyor increased, and their activities intensified on 6 June 2007. The vice president of the village council of Walajeh, Adel al-Atrash, gave this testimony to the Human Rights Monitoring Section – Land Research:

Surveyor teams accompanied by the Israeli Army intensified their activities at the beginning of June in the village of Walajeh to determine the route of the separation wall to be built on village land on locations of Al-Natouf, Ain Jwaizeh, Smai’, Khallat Samak, Al-Rwaisat, and Tanateer; all are sites planted with olive and almond trees, with parts allocated for sheep pasture. When the separation wall is built it will be 6 km long, and will separate the village from 45% of its land, and would expropriate 700 dunums (one dunum = 0.2471 acre) for its route. A total of 2100 dunums out of 4500 dunums that the village owns will be lost for the wall.

Walajeh land area of 17.793 dunums has shrunk to 2400 dunums due to Israeli land-grab policies since 1948, and continues to this day in the village of Walajeh, 8.5 km south-west of the city of Jerusalem and 5.4 km north-west of the city of Bethlehem. The village lost 11793 dunums as a result of the British sponsored Jordanian-Israeli truce and the creation of Israel; and after 1967 the Israelis confiscated 500 dunums for the construction of a bypass road in 1996, in addition to withholding 1000 dunums of the southern district of the village for the settlement of Gilo in the period 1969-1997. This land theft left the village with only 4500 dunums. Now 2100 more dunums planted with olives and almonds are threatened by the separation wall.

On June 18, 2007, the Israeli Antiquities Authority has installed canopy and umbrellas for archaeological activities on land owned by Fatima Mahmoud Salim, Ibrahim Ali Khalil, and Atiya Shananir, in a section of Khirbat Abdul Ghani, estimated land area of 150 dunums. Atrash says that the Israeli occupation law states that the archaeological work ought to be performed by the Israeli Antiquities Authority. So far work on 6 dunums 3 to 20 meters deep has been completed. Atrash said that the archaeological excavation aims to place the lands with any archaeological value on the Israeli side of the wall; and to steel any archaeological assets found and transfer them to Israeli museums in order to claim it as Israeli antiquities; and there are ancient wells, caves, and ancient graves on the site that are all Islamic. Atrash estimates the number of crews doing the work to be over sixty people.

Dahiyat El-Barid: The Israeli occupation army continues to suffocate Jerusalem and to keep it under siege, especially Dahiyat El-Barid suburb which is being subjected to the expansion and construction of the apartheid wall that isolates communities from Jerusalem and from each other.

Two: Imposition of closures and siege on Jerusalem, and the policy of ethnic cleansing and racial discrimination against Jerusalemites

Anata, Hizma, Shu’fat Refugee Camp, Z’aiyem, Biddo, and al-Jeeb: David Sheared, Director of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), exposed in a report with pictures and maps the extension of the Israeli schemes to build huge and separate roads for Israeli settlers and for Palestinians, in and around Jerusaelmin, especially Z’aiyem road--Shu’fat Refugee Camp, and the Anata—Hizma road, and linking them to Ramallah road, near the wall. He stressed that this road is too large and low, where the street extends on both sides of the wall to the depth of about 20 meters, separating Palestinian traffic from north of the city to the south behind the wall, while settlers and Jerusalem identity holders continue to use this street to reach the settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim, Jericho, Jordan Valley and to the Dead Sea; and some streets are strictly for the use of Israeli settlers to reach settlements inside and outside the city of Jerusalem in the West Bank.

Wadi El-Jozz: On 28 June 2007 the Israeli Special Forces and Border Patrol units closed the entrances to Wadi El-Jozz neighborhoods, surrounded the Abdeen Mosque and prevented those praying inside from leaving while they conducted ID checks, infuriating and humiliating all those present for no logical reason.

Ras El-Amood Road and the Gethsemane: The occupation municipality of Jerusalem established areas of control in Silwan and West Gethsemane Church in June 2007, with the aim to claimed objective of watching religious racist groups who target property and real estate, and attack Arab citizens, and possibly to market tourism tickets, and to exercise more control of the sites surrounding the historic ancient Jerusalem wall, in the context of the scheme of colonial occupation of the municipality in Jerusalem in 2020 which aims to transform the area around Jerusalem through ethnic cleansing of the city’s Arab owners.

Three: Attacks on religious sanctities, violation of the right to freedom of worship and to practice religious rites

Saturday, 2 June 2007: The Joint Research, Monitoring and Documentation Unit of the Jerusalem Center for Democracy and Human Rights learned that Dar Al-Fatwa and Islamic Palestinian Research have called for acceleration of efforts to save Jerusalem's Old City from the planned creeping Judaization process through forgery, tunneling, and the seizure of Arab property, threatening historical sites, and holy Islamic and Christian places; and added that the occupation authorities prevented Jerusalemites from restoring their homes privately or through relevant institutions; facing harassment and interdiction, and endangering property, heritage, and history in order to make them available to the occupation authorities, with no regard for the law, rules or regulations, petitions and protests, domestic or international.

Friday, 15 June 2007: The Israeli occupation forces imposed severe restrictions on access of Muslim worshipers to Al-Aqsa Mosque to perform Friday prayers, claiming that they fear the outbreak of demonstrations in the wake of current developments in the Gaza Strip. Massive deployment of Israeli forces in the vicinity of Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Old City of Jerusalem prevented all Palestinians under 45 years old, and women younger than 35, from praying in the Mosque. Eventually, worshipers who were not able to access the mosque had to pray in the streets near the Old City of Jerusalem, particularly in the Damascus Gate, Sahirah Gate, and the Asbat Gate areas. Israeli police have established checkpoints at all entrances to the Old City of Jerusalem, and the entrances to Al-Aqsa Mosque, checked the identities of hundreds of young men and prevented them from entering the mosque.

Wednesday, 20 June 2007: The Jerusalem police today petitioned the Magistrate Court to extend, for additional 90 days, the ban on the head of the Islamic movement, Sheikh Raed Salah’s visit to the Mosque, and to prevent him from having a gathering with a crowd of more than eight people. The request came at the end of earlier arbitrary ban by the same court. His lawyer said that the court had not yet decided on the request of the new request, but they initially decided to continue the ban until the court decide on the request, and no trial date has been set.

Friday, 22 June 2007: Today the Israeli occupation authorities imposed severe restrictions on the entry of Palestinian citizens to the city of Jerusalem and its environs, and those within the 1948 territory, to enter the Old City of Jerusalem to perform Friday prayers at Al-Aqsa Mosque. Worshipers had their personal identity cards confiscated and replaced with police cards to be used after the Friday prayer to retrieve their own cards; hundreds were prevented from passing military and police checkpoints on the main entrances of the city.

Four: Home demolition, seizure of buildings, refusal to grant building permits, and violation of the right to housing

Qarmin Neighborhood – The Old City: Jewish extremists guarded by members of the Israeli police and border guards, on June 3, 2007, opened an additional new entrance to the wedding hall belonging to the "Ateret leYoshna" settlers association in the neighborhood of Qarmin Street in the Old City of Jerusalem. The digging and construction activities threaten the foundation of a hall in Mr. Ayed Ahmad Kastero’s home, leased from the Nusseibeh family, which was used as a warehouse since 1965. Members of the border guards surrounded the area, during the drilling, and prevented citizens and journalists from approaching the site; they beat the owner, his wife, and son Fayez, arrested his son Hamada, and throughout the day they prevented them from entering their home.

Sbitani Building – Su’fat: The Salihi family in Shu’fat is in constant fear of the Taxes (Arnona) levied against them, Salhi’s six brothers and two sisters, and the harassment by the Jerusalem tax department for the last four months, demanding payment of 160,000 NIS.

Wadi Helweh – Silwan: A group of Jewish settler extremists belonging to the Yad Tova Yafa tried to take over a home belonging to Mr. Khalid Faraj al-Malhi family in the Wadi Helweh northern neighborhood near the Jerusalem ancient Wall in Silwan suburb; the site is surrounded by houses already taken over by settlers on the north and east. The Israeli police handed the Faraj family an eviction notice ordering them to vacate the premises in 24 hour on June 6, 2007, claiming that the house had been bought by settlers.

The Malhi families received a barrage of telephone calls from settlers threatened to bomb, kill, and arrest the family. Attorney Mohammad Dahla and an Israeli Tel Aviv attorney (Mandel) are following up the case. The House consists of two buildings with four apartments, and the basement unit. Thirty one people live in the complex, including 23 children.

Al-Thouri Neighborhood: On June 10, 2007, police and intelligence forces stormed the house of Malhi’s sister Um Farid al-Malhi, located in Al-Thouri area in order to pressure her brothers to vacate their homes in the neighborhood of Wadi Hilwh in Silwan. She was asked to persuade her brothers to leave their houses, and they broke her house’s door and windows then confiscated two large suitcases from the house.

Al-Shayyah – Jabal Mukabber: Israeli police forces and border guards on horsebacks surrounded Al-Shyyah neighborhood in Jabal Mukabber suburb of Jerusalem on June 11, 2007 as the Jerusalem municipality workers, accompanied by police dogs, demolished the house of Ali Muhammad Mousa Jum’a after taking the furniture out. The house is 100 sq meter, and consists of one flat inhabited by 10 individuals, including 8 children. The reason given was that the house is too close to apartheid wall, and for being unlicensed. Mr. Jum’a application for a license was never processed.

On the same day, June 11, 2007, the Jerusalem Municipal Court postponed the municipality’s decision to demolish the house of Mr. Shaker Mohammad Mousa Jum’a (Ali’s brother) until the court decides on June 21, 2007, on condition that he pays a fine of 50 thousand shekels. Four people, including two children, live in the 100 sq meter house that was built ten years ago. Shaker, however, has been paying a fine of 43 thousand shekels for the last two years.

Al-Sawahreh Sharqiyeh: On June 11, 2007 the Israeli municipality of occupation bulldozers demolished the house of Jamil Ahmed Jamil Shkirat for the second time in three years. The 60 sq meter house, built near the ruins of the first destroyed house, had two rooms with accessories, and housed the family of two adults and 4 children for a year and a half. The Israeli Central Court had issued an order to vacate the house six months ago, and indeed Mr. Shkirat vacated the building, but was surprised that his house was demolished without prior warning. Shkirat holds a West Bank identity card and now resides outside the separation wall.

Ain Lozeh –Silwan: Lawyer Mohammed Qadah has won a restraining order from the Court of local affairs in Jerusalem that will postpone the demolition order of the home of 30-year-old Ashraf Ja’bari until the 1^st of April 2008, in order to give Mr. Ja’bari time to apply for a building license for the house, which will result in the cancellation of the demolition order. The house is located at the entrance of Wadi Yasul, Ein Lozeh, in Silwan.

Al-Thouri Neighborhood: Additional fine for the Haddad family with a pretext of building without a license. The Jerusalem Municipality Court issued a ruling that postponed the demolition of the house of Mr. Muhammad Eid Haddad and his brother Jalal until the first of January 2008, in order to give them sufficient time to follow the procedures of obtaining a building permit; their home is located in Al-Thouri Neighborhood, across from Zaghal grocery store.

Beit Hanina: The Israeli Supreme Court on June 13, 2007 deliberated the legality of the Attorney General’s decision in regard to Jerusalem municipality revoking the building permit of Majid Abu Eisheh, in Beit Hanina, after receiving a building license in 2002, and the approval of local and regional committees of the additions to the building, now being used as pretext for the permit revocation. The demolition reprieve set by the Israeli Supreme Court is for 15 days. The five story building houses about 30 people (several families) who lived in it for over three years, and consists of five flats, 170 sq meters each.

Beit Hanina: On June 12, 2007, large police and Border Guard forces raided 57 year-old Talal Rasheed Zahdeh’s home in Beit Hanina, across from the College of Advocacy and Fundamentals of Religion, at 4:00 in the afternoon.

Mount of Olives: Jerusalem Municipality bulldozers demolished a building consisting of three apartments located on the Mount of Olives overlooking Al-Aqsa Mosque, 27 people were scheduled to move into the building.

Jannat Adn Intersection -- Beit Hanina: The Jerusalem Municipality, and the building and zoning committees pursued a new scheme for licensing Jerusalem Arab residential buildings, by forcing the owner to give part of his property to the Municipality in exchange for a building license. Such unfair exploitation of the owner’s needs was experienced by the East Jerusalem resident Walid Suleiman Saleem Sleiman Abu-Taiyeh who was forced to give up the ground floor of his building in Beit Hanina to the Municipality as a condition for approval of his request for the construction license of a five-storey building. At the time, Abu Taiyeh consulted with attorney Sami Irshaid about the legality of the transaction, who decided to petition the Central Court in Jerusalem and challenge the legality of such blackmail, especially after a huge fine was paid. The court ruled in favor of the building owner and ordered cancellation of the contract-under-duress, asserting that the decision was illegal and beyond the powers of the building and zoning committees, setting a legal precedent. The building, consisting of five floors, contains ten apartments, houses over 18 individuals, including children.

Sheikh Jarrah: Lawyer Hatem Abu Ahmed have obtained a Israeli Supreme Court order for the evacuation of settlers from the home of Muhammad Kamil Al-Kurd, but the Israeli police refused to enforce the eviction more than one time, after which settler reoccupy the house.

Jerusalem Old City – Bab-Hutta: Jewish Colonists continue to smuggle construction materials into the Old City of Jerusalem, over the Ancient Jerusalem Wall near Palestine Museum, for construction and rehabilitation of buildings seized from the Palestinian owners in many areas of the City, and in Bab Hutta in particular, where construction work is concentrated heavily on the sites adjacent to the northern section of the ancient wall of Jerusalem. All work is done illegally and without a building license.

Sh’aab El-Eneb – Silwan: On June 7, 2007 Jerusalem’s occupation municipality bulldozers demolished the family home of 68 year-old Othmanah Amran Ibrahim Yasini, which housed a family of four.

Location	Number of demolished homes
Mount of Olives	5
Jabal Mukabber	1
Al-Sawahreh Sharqiyeh	1
Silwan	1
Total:	8

Source: Center for Land Research, Association of Arab Studies/field research/Monthly Report of Israeli Violations in Jerusalem, June 2007

Al-Mawahel Neighborhood – Beit Hanina: Neighborhood’s 1200 residents in Beit Hanina, east of Bir Nabala, suffer complete isolation as a result of the separation wall that fenced the area in on three sides. This isolation made the residents vulnerable to attacks by armed thieves and bandits, and forced some of them to abandon their residences and move elsewhere. After the separation wall was built, the municipality stopped providing the area with the municipal services such as garbage collection, sewage and rain water drainage, and facilities maintenance or network repairs. These conditions caused the rain water to mix with sewage, garbage pile-up, deterioration of the road network, and serious health hazards.

Imposition of Taxes: Wednesday, 13 June 2007 -- Israeli police officers, accompanied by municipality employees issued today dozens of fines to merchants on the Rasheed, Zahra, and Asfahani streets in Jerusalem for parking their cars in front of their shops. The fines range from 100 to 500 Israeli Shekels. Merchants complained that they have no alternative but to park in front of their businesses, and parking lots nearby cost 15 shekels per hour, which they can’t afford.

Five: Raids on towns and neighborhoods of Jerusalem, home invasions and arrest campaigns

Sunday, 10 June 2007: Occupation army troops raided the town of Abu-Dis, late at night, and arrested Imran Halabiyeh, Mu’een Halabiyeh, Fadhl Mubiyed, Ali Ahmad Ayad, Mohammad Suleiman Khanafseh, and Khalid Saleem Halabiyeh. Field Research and Documentation Unit of the Jerusalem Center for Democracy and Human Rights, learned that several military vehicles with a number of soldiers raided and searched the homes of the detainees and wrecked their contents before taking the detainees away.

Thursday, 21 June 2007: In their arbitrary actions against detainees, the occupation forces today prevented the wife of Jerusalem’s Palestinian Legislative Council member, Mr. Muhammad Totah, of the Change and Reform List, from visiting her imprisoned husband.

Tuesday, 26 June 2007: The Israeli Magistrate Court in the occupied city of Jerusalem today issued a decision to postpone the trial of Dr. Tayseer Tamimi, Chief Justice and Head of the Supreme Judicial Shari’a Council, to July 20, 2007, after the recent resumption of the trial. A court panel has accused Sheihk Tamimi of entering Jerusalem, and Al-Aqsa Mosque several times without obtaining a permit from the Israeli occupation authorities, and of incitement against the occupation.

Sunday, 17 June 2007: Today, the Israeli Central Court in Tel Aviv decided to introduce a psychiatrist's report in the trial of murderer Julian Shafir who killed Palestinian taxi driver Tayseer Karaki last month in his apartment in the city of Tel Aviv for nationalistic reasons, according to the killer. A medical report concluded that Shafir is mentally unstable, unfit to stand trial, and his psychological state make him unable take responsibility for his actions. This defense was rejected by the victim’s lawyer as precedent that will encourage and signal other Israeli extremists to commit more crimes against Palestinian Arabs.

This is not the first time that the Zionist authorities claim that the perpetrators of these crimes suffer from psychiatric disorders. The same claim was used for a Jewish arsonist who tried to burn Al-Aqsa Mosque over 30 years ago; the criminal who carried out the attack on the Dome of the Rock Mosque in 1982; the lone murderer who committer the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre that killed 29 Palestinians in the 90s, and many more crime whose perpetrators go unpunished, only if the victims are Palestinian Arabs.

Seven: Violation of freedom of expression; and of political, cultural, and other civil rights

Preventing a conference of the National Coalition for the Defense of the Rights of the Palestinians in Jerusalem marking the 40th anniversary of the occupation of Jerusalem

Tuesday, 5 June 2007: The Minister of Internal Security, Avi Richter, today issued an order banning the National Coalition for the Defense of the Rights of Palestinians in Jerusalem from holding a conference in Jerusalem to commemorate the 40^th year of occupation of the City at the Ambassador Hotel. The ban came in a decree posted at the hotel’s entrance which read: "According to the application of the Central Law of 1995 for the West Bank and Gaza, regarding activities limitations, it is ordered that the meeting is banned at the Ambassador Hotel or any other place in Israel, and anyone working on this meeting or hosting it must prevent the holding of this meeting.” This ban forced the participants in the meeting to eventually hold it in front of the hotel under the watchful eyes of the Israeli military.

Jerusalemites are deprived of their residency rights; 1363 Arab residents had their identity cards revoked in 2006

Sunday, 24 June 2007: According to data from the Israeli Ministry of the Interior, 1363 Jerusalem Arab residents lost their Jerusalem identity cards, an increase of 500% compared to 2005; an unprecedented high figure since 1985, due to the Israeli policy of withdrawing citizenship of Arab residents of Jerusalem in order to facilitate ethnically cleansing the City of its Arab population.

As a result of Israel’s annexation of Jerusalem in 1968, the City’s Arabs population was granted permanent residency status, supposedly giving them most of the privileges enjoyed by Jewish Israelis. However, under Israeli law, the “Jewish” state can deny these rights and annul the Jerusalem identity cards from Jerusalem Arabs who reside outside of the City’s boundaries (e.g. in the West Bank), or who live outside the country.

Israel has adopted, since 1995, a policy of revoking residency citizenship rights of Arab individuals and groups of the Jerusalem population, during notorious Eli Suissa’s tenure at the Ministry of Interior, where he exacerbated this process of revoking residency rights of Jerusalem’s Arab population. Suissa became minister in 1996 representing the extremist party Shaas, and used his position to create obstacles that made impossible for Arabs to acquire building permits in Jerusalem, which led to severe shortages in housing for Arabs and forced many of them to move out, therefore causing them to lose their Jerusalem residency IDs. Thus, a growing number of Arab citizens had their citizenship (residency) cancelled: 739 individuals lost these rights in 1996, 1067 in 1997, and 788 in 1998. In the years 1999 -2001 that rate stood at 200 to 300 annually.

According to a report by the Israeli Human Rights Center (B'Tselem), entitled Quiet Transfer, Israel has pursued, through the Interior Ministry, additional methods to reduce the number of Palestinian citizens of East Jerusalem residents by revoking citizenship status for those who reside outside the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem. The report went on to say that those who fail, now or in the past, to prove their Jerusalem residency are required to leave their City forever. In this case they lose their rights to housing, employment, and social and civil services, for them and their families. The report added that this policy has not been publicized, so that no warning is given to Palestinians at risk of being stripped of their residency rights, and the right to return and live in their Jerusalem homes. The population of West and East Jerusalem is currently 720 thousand, including 245 thousand Palestinians, while the Jewish population is 475 thousand. The research, monitoring and documentation unit of the Jerusalem Center for Democracy and Human Rights documented the case of one Palestinian family, with seven children, who was forced to live in a shop, converted to a living space, in a Jerusalem alley way. The Israeli authorities denied them the right to be in the City because they have lived in a house in an area Israel considers to be part of the West Bank, even though the family paid city taxes, electricity and water bills, and have proof of residency in the City.

After Israel has signed and ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1966 and in force in 1976, it is obligated to apply its provisions in the occupied Palestinian Territories, including Jerusalem. Article (2) paragraph (1) of the Covenant provides that: "Each State Party to the present Covenant undertakes to respect and to ensure to all individuals within its territory and subject to its jurisdiction the rights recognized in the present Covenant, without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.” Israel as an occupying power therefore is obliged to abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 on the protection of civilians under occupation. Thus, the Civic Coalition for Defending Palestinians’ Rights in Jerusalem calls for the following: