An Israeli appeals court recently upheld a decision by a lower court to evict Palestinian squatters living rent-free on Jewish-owned land in the eastern Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah/Shimon HaTzadik. Although the debate surrounding the property dates back many years, the issue this week exploded into the limelight as Palestinians for several nights on end clashed with Israeli police and Jewish residents of the area.
Most major media outlets were quick to adopt the Palestinian narrative that the real estate dispute between private parties was somehow linked to alleged attempts by Israel to “Judaize” Jerusalem and simultaneous riots by tens of thousands of Arabs on Temple Mount and near the Old City’s Damascus Gate. In reality, though, the situation in Sheikh Jarrah/Shimon HaTzadik is unrelated and highly complex, as demonstrated by the fact that the case has been working its way through the courts for decades. In fact, several Palestinian tenants of a few buildings in question acknowledged under oath as far back as the 1980s that the property was indeed owned by Jews.
Not surprisingly, many outlets have distorted the basic facts of the story, preferring instead to jump on the anti-Israel bandwagon.
Consider this paragraph from a report published by The Washington Post:
In recent days, protests have grown over Israel’s threatened eviction in Sheikh Jarrah/Shimon HaTzadik of dozens of Palestinians embroiled in a long legal battle with Israeli settlers trying to acquire property in the neighborhood.” [emphasis added]
This assertion is simply false. Israelis are not trying to acquire property in Sheikh Jarrah, but want to regain control over what they believe legally belongs to them. In 1875, Rabbi Avraham Ashkenazi and Rabbi Meir Auerbach acquired the land in question from Arab sellers. Shortly before Israel’s War of Independence, in 1946, two Jewish non-governmental organizations moved to register the deed with authorities in what was then British Mandatory Palestine.
Few media mentioned that Sheikh Jarrah is also known as Shimon HaTzadik, named after the Jewish High Priest during the Second Temple period, whose tomb is located in the neighborhood. After the war in 1948, Shimon HaTzadik came under the control of Jordan, which expelled the local Jewish population and gave the resulting vacant houses to Jordanian citizens, who paid rent to the Jordanian Custodian.
In the 1970s, after Jerusalem was unified under Israeli sovereignty, Va’ad Eidat HaSfaradim and Va’ad HaKlali L’Knesset Yisrael reclaimed their ownership with the Israeli Custodian of Absentee Property. In 1982, the Palestinian residents of the property – including the parents and grandparents of some of the current occupants – signed an agreement confirming that the Israeli NGOs were the rightful owners.
In the early 2000s, these two Israeli non-profits sold the land to the Nahalat Shimon organization. The Palestinians occupying the dwelling were nevertheless allowed to continue living there and enjoyed “Protected Residents” status. However, by law, the tenants were required to pay rent to Nahalat Shimon. It was only after the Palestinian residents refused to do so — and instead illegally expanded the property and rented out spaces to third parties — that Nahalat Shimon initiated eviction proceedings.
This past February, the Jerusalem District Court upheld an October 2020 decision by the Jerusalem Magistrate Court, which ruled in favor of Nahalat Shimon. According to the verdict, the residents failed to back up their claim that the former Jordanian authorities had gifted them the property. “All of the witnesses were born after [the] 1967 [Six Day War, in which Israel acquired the area] or were very young at the time and testified that they heard about the [Jordanian] promise from an older relative,” the lower court had noted. No tangible evidence of ownership was presented.
However, this crucial context has been almost entirely missing from the news cycle. When Reuters writes that “Jewish settlers backed by an Israeli court have taken over some homes” in Sheikh Jarrah/Shimon HaTzadik, or Associated Press reports that “dozens of Palestinians are fighting attempts by Israeli settlers to evict them from their homes,” without even mentioning the facts surrounding the case, an informed discussion on the matter becomes impossible.
The Supreme Court, Israel’s final court of appeals, was supposed to hear the case on Monday, but delayed the session by a month at the request of Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit. According to local media, Israels security services feared that the trial could further fuel tensions in the holy city. In the meantime, the Palestinian squatters will be allowed to remain on the property.
Meanwhile, the Human Rights Office of the United Nations on Saturday went as far as saying that the possible eviction, rooted in basic property law, would “contribute to a coercive environment and lead to a risk of forcible transfer.” The US State Department expressed “deep concern” about the situation in Sheikh Jarrah/Shimon HaTzadik, noting that many of the tenants have “lived in their homes for generations.” Concurrently, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders (D-VT) posted angry statements to Twitter, with the former suggesting that the prospective evictions were “abhorrent.” For her part, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) falsely claimed that “Israeli forces are forcing families from their homes.”
By once again wreaking havoc in the streets of Jerusalem, Palestinians have seemingly successfully turned a minuscule — and not uncommon — real estate disagreement into a major international incident. But none of this would have been possible without the laziness, if not complicity, of mainstream media outlets. Instead of insisting that their journalists do a modicum of due diligence, apparently they prefer to smear Israel, in general, and “settlers,” specifically, who do not believe that four Palestinian families have the right to live on lands that Israeli courts have to date determined belong to these Jews.
