Days of Palestine – Jerusalem

Israeli occupation forces (IOF) attacked on Monday the residents of the Shiekh Jarrah neighborhood in occupied Jerusalem. Injuries among Palestinian were reported; one of them was taken to the hospital.

Jerusalemite sources reported that IOF brutally assaulted men, women, young men, and children in the neighborhood, injuring many of them.

Only because he was chanting “Allahu Akbar,” the sources indicated that the IOF brutally beat the boy, Muhammad al-Ajlouni, who has Down’s syndrome which led to his transfer to the hospital.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society stated that its ambulance crews dealt with 3 injuries after the IOF attacked the residents of Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, in addition to searching an ambulance while transporting one of the injured.

The residents of the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood and a number of solidarity activists performed the Maghrib prayer near the home of the Sa`u family, who is threatened with displacement.

The confrontations and tense conditions in the neighborhood continued for the ninth day in a row, after “Ben Gvir” opened an office in the neighborhood, claiming that this step would provide protection for the settlers.

Dozens of families in “Sheikh Jarrah” face the threat of forced eviction and displacement from their homes in the interest of settlement projects, as settlers continue their attacks on the neighborhood.

Settlers attacked the residents’ tens of times while the occupation’s municipality seized 4 dunums belonging to Palestinian families in the area allegedly for the public interest.

Moreover, the Israeli authorities demolished 2 houses and 5 facilities and violently seized 6 dunums belonging to the Salihiya family in Karam al-Mufti area in the neighborhood on 19 January 2022, allegedly for the public interest as well.

IOF also seized 30 dunums in northern Sheikh Jarrah in favor of establishing the national gardens.

Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) condemns settlers’ violence and stresses that IOF should be held accountable for this systematic violence, which is supported by a political decision to seize Palestinian lands and property within a systematic policy aiming at perpetuating settlement activity in occupied Jerusalem.

PCHR warns of the Israeli repeated attempts aiming at displacing Palestinians from their lands through demolishing or confiscating their houses and property within a de facto policy to change the demographic characteristics of the occupied city.

PCHR recalls in this instance that Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 prohibits the “Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not…, regardless of their motive.”

Except, “if the security of the population or imperative military reasons so demand.” Additionally, Article 7.1.d of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court stipulates that deportation or forcible transfer of population when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population is a crime against humanity. Also, Articles 6, 7, and 8 of the Rome Statute stipulate that deportation or forcible transfer are war crimes.

PCHR calls upon the international community and United Nations bodies to proactively intervene to end the Israeli crimes against Palestinians and to provide them with the required protection.