The Palestinians in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah are increasingly being harassed and attacked by settlers and the Israeli police, in an effort to push them to vacate their homes and hand them over to settlers.

Twenty-eight Palestinian families have resided in Sheikh Jarrah since 1956, following their displacement in the Palestinian Nakba in 1948. They were settled there in accordance with an agreement between the Jordan Ministry of Development and United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees that provided them with housing. Yet Israeli groups claim that the houses were built on land owned by Jews owned before 1948, which the Palestinians deny.

In 1972, Israeli associations forged ownership papers of land in Sheikh Jarrah, which the Palestinians own, and registered a number of land plots in the Israel Lands Administration. Yet the team of lawyers in charge of defending the Palestinians found Turkish papers denying Jewish ownership of this land. The Israeli courts, however, rejected the documents claiming Palestinian families’ ownership of the land and insist on the eviction decisions.

Due to the sharp differences between the settlers and the residents, after they refused to leave their homes, Israel’s highest court offered a middle-ground solution for the eviction of Arab families in the neighborhood. It consists of keeping Palestinian families in their homes in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood as tenants for 15 years, during which they will pay rent to the Nahalat Shimon settler association. The latter claims ownership of the land on which the homes were built in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.