OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, April 4, 2006 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Backed by court orders and wealthy donors, ultra-nationalist Jewish groups continue to evict indigenous Palestinians from their homes in occupied Al-Quds (East Jerusalem) in forced transfers of property to Jewish settlers.
"They came for us on Wednesday morning, saying you have 30 minutes to get out," Riyad Ghozlan told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Tuesday, April 4.
"About 80 people turned up and they took all our possessions. They threw us out, closed the doors and changed the locks."
Ghozlan received a bill for $245,000 in back rent from the "real" Jewish owners and a court order to leave.
The family, whose name is still written in Arabic on the doorbell, has lived in the house for 40 years.
The house, built by the grandfather in 1966, now houses security guards pending the arrival of settlers, who prefer to call Silwan the "City of David".
The Ghozlan family has been given a special Israeli certificate for having saved Jews during bloody riots in 1929.
Irreversible
Elad, an ultra-nationalist, religious group, openly advocates the judaization of Al-Quds, according to AFP.
When contacted by AFP, a spokesman said "Elad is not going to give any details about stuff we're doing around Silwan."
Elad, one of two Jewish nonprofit organizations working to settle Jews in Palestinian houses in Al-Quds, admits it wants to create an "irreversible situation" in the holy city.
"Our goal is to hold on to outposts in East Jerusalem and create an irreversible situation in the sacred basin around the Old City," Adi Mintz, a member of Elad's management board, told Israeli Haaretz newspaper on Monday, April 3.
A-Tur, one of the largest neighborhoods overlooking Al-Aqsa Mosque, was home to the two Palestinian families of Abu Al-Hawa and Kiswani before being forced out by Elad.
Mohammed Abu Al-Hawa said some people showed up at his doorstep last week and offered him $300,000 for his apartment.
Declining to sell, they showed him a contract stating that the two buildings had already been sold, including the apartment he lives in.
Abu al-Hawa asserted that his mother's signature on the contract had been forged.
In March last year, Israel's Maariv newspaper reported that foreign Jewish investors had paid millions of dollars to buy two large properties at Jaffa Gate, the main entrance to Al-Quds’s Old City, in a secret deal with the Greek Orthodox Church.
The Palestinians maintain that purchasing property in the Old City is part of a scheme to judaize the holy city.
Government Support
Elan Frenkel from Arab-Jewish group Taayush told AFP the Israeli government is involved in a plan "to transfer Palestinians out of Jerusalem so Israel can annex their property without Palestinian inhabitants."
Mintz told Haaretz that Acting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert "was always among the supporters of the Jewish nonprofits in East Jerusalem."
Othniel Schneller, a new MP for Olmert's Kadima party, said the Old City and the "sacred basin" - which includes the Mount of Olives and Silwan - will remain in Israel's hands under a permanent peace agreement.
He added that "outskirts neighborhoods" like Shoafat, Anata and Abu Dis will remain in the hands of the Palestinian Authority.
Comatose Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon revealed plans last year to link Al-Quds with the large Ma'ale Adumim settlement in the occupied West Bank by building thousands of new homes.
His cabinet approved in July a revised route of the controversial West Bank separation wall, leaving around a quarter of the Palestinian residents in Al-Quds cut off from the rest of the city.
Palestinians want the entire Al-Quds, occupied and then annexed by Israel in 1967, to be the capital of their future state.
There are around 230,000 Palestinians living in Al-Quds, home to Islam's third holiest shrine.
"Not in my name"
The house eviction and land confiscation scheme is not supported by all Jews, with many joining Palestinians in protesting the acquisition.
"I'm here to protest the legal process of land confiscation and it's being done in my name," said Josh Friedman, an American Jew.
"I don't think it's right to privilege one ethnic group over another, it's morally indefensible. And this is happening all over the place, around east Jerusalem and the West Bank."
Rabbi Arik Ascherman, from the Israeli peace organization Rabbis For Human Rights, blasted the injustice done to the Ghozlan family.
"We often decry the fact that so few people have lifted a finger to help Jews through thousands of years of oppression and here we have a family that saved Jews from the massacres in 1929," he told AFP.
"I'm sure the family would gladly return their certificate in exchange for the house.
"Is this how we treat people who try to help us?"
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