Palestinians facing eviction from East Jerusalem offered deal

Judge proposes compromise to settle dispute over home ownership with Israeli settlers in Sheikh Jarrah

Bethan McKernan and Quique Kierszenbaum
Mon 2 Aug 2021 17.37 BST

Palestinian residents of the occupied East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah facing forcible eviction from their homes have been offered a compromise deal with Jewish settlers by Israel’s supreme court, in an unexpected development in the high-profile case.

The session on Monday, which was supposed to reach a final decision on whether to accept an appeal from four Palestinian families over eviction orders in the decades-old legal battle, was instead met with a surprise entreaty from the judges for the two sides to accept a “practical solution”.

“What we are saying is, let’s move from the level of principles to the levels of practicality,” Justice Isaac Amit told the courtroom, where proceedings took place in Hebrew without translation into Arabic. “People must continue to live there and that’s the idea, to try to reach a practical arrangement.”

The proposed compromise would allow the 70 Palestinians to remain in their homes as tenants with “protected status” and safeguard them from eviction for “the coming years” while paying an annual fee of 1,500NIS (£335) to the Nahalat Shimon company, a settler organisation that lower courts have declared the rightful owners of the disputed properties.

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Sheikh Jarrah: Palestinians offered way out from evictions

By Raffi Berg
BBC News Online Middle East editor

2 August 2021

Israel's top court has proposed a plan to enable Palestinians threatened with eviction in East Jerusalem to stay, in a closely-watched and divisive case.

The Supreme Court was expected to issue a ruling to end a long legal battle but urged the sides to compromise instead.

It proposed the four families could stay in their homes in Sheikh Jarrah if they recognised the land was owned by a Jewish settlement company.

The issue has fuelled Israel-Palestinian tensions in recent months.

The threat of evictions stoked some of the worst violence between Israeli police and Palestinians in Jerusalem in years, culminating in an 11-day conflict with Gaza after its militant Hamas rulers fired rockets at the city in what it said was partly a response to Israeli "harassment" in Sheikh Jarrah.

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