Permanenetly Unsettled

[holyland]

Permanently unsettled – the story of the Al Kurd Family
Palestine Monitor
17 December 2008
Mohammad and Fawwazieh Al Kurd and their family have been living for more than 50 years in their family mansion in Sheikh Jarrah, at the eastern outskirts of Jerusalem. In July this year, the family received an eviction order that got concrete in November, as a group of Jewish settlers claimed ownership of their house. On the night of the 9th of November, Fawwazieh and her husband were violently evicted. Abu Kamal, father of five and the husband of Fawwazieh, was already paralyzed and suffering from bad heath conditions, diabetes and heart problems, and passed away as a consequence. He didn't survive the latest chain of events. For the last month, Fawwazieh has been living in a tent, outside of what used to be her neighbourhood, waiting to get her house back.
The atmosphere in Sheikh Jarrah is tense and silent the morning that we meet Umm Kamal. Some forty women are gathered in a blue plastic tent, keeping company to the widow, silently and collectively mourning Muhammad Al Kurd, 62 years-old, Fawwazieh's husband and father of five, who died three days earlier. She has been living in a haphazard tent for 3 weeks on an empty piece of land, down the street from her previous family house.

 
Fawwazieh Al Kurd (in the middle) mourning her husband in the Sheikh Jarrah tent Picture: Palestine Monitor In July this year, the family received an eviction order from the Israeli Supreme Court, ordering them to leave the house that would be occupied by Israeli settlers.After having faced a summer of worries and resistance against the pressuring eviction, the three weeks that followed their eviction were anything but quiet for the Al Kurd family as the chain of harsh events continued unabated. Even after the eviction, the harassment has carried on. Settlers and Israeli forces have come three times to destroy their tent. Today, they are camping on land privately owned by a relative, expecting to be evicted from the tent again. When asked about how long she will remain here, settled in a small tent without any basic facilities, Umm Kamal answers "I will remain here, sleeping in the tent, until we get our house back."

Initially from a village that now lies inside Israel, the Al Kurd family is, as many Palestinians in Jerusalem and the West Bank are, refugees from 1948. Fawwazieh's husband grew up in this house, bought by his father in 1956. In the 1970, she moved there with Muhammad, living and raising their five children in the mansion. "This house has followed the story of my family. My five kids were born and got married here", she explains. She spent years renovating her home making improvements, dividing it into smaller sections to accommodate her five children and their families, and to provide a place of peace and rest for herself and her husband, Muhammad Al Kurd, who was partially paralysed and suffered from diabetes and heart problems.

The house was legally bought in 1956 by Abu Kamal's father and is part of a housing project built by the Jordanian government in cooperation with the United Nations Relief Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) to house 28 Palestinian refugee families who fled their homes in 1948. For the over fifty years when her family lived there, Umm Kamal paid all taxes required by the Municipality. They have been ordered – and paid – 24.000 Euros for legal fees and taxes.

Today, a group of Jewish settlers are claiming that they own the Al Kurd's home, along with 27 other houses in the neighbourhood. Their claim is based on an ottoman property title from 1886 the authenticity of which is however contested. The Jewish settlers' association's project aims at destroying the Palestinian houses and building in their place a housing unit that would host some 200 settlers. Today, the 28 refugees families from 1948 are all facing eviction from their homes.

 
Picture: Palestine Monitor The Al Kurd's story is singular but it has also become a symbol of many Palestinian families threatened with eviction in Jerusalem. "In my opinion, this is a policy of ethnic cleansing" affirms Fawwazieh.

To many observers, the Sheikh Jarrah's collective eviction is only a small part of a wide scheme to settle and enhance small settlement units that will be scattered in East Jerusalem, in order to break the "Arab continuity" of East Jerusalem and reverse the demography repartition.

Facts are speaking from themselves. In the 3 first years of the occupation that followed the 1967 war, Israel confiscated 18,27 square kilometers of Palestinian land, reaching 23,4 square kilometers by 1991. The beginning of the building of the Wall in 2004 has increased the amount of land confiscation in Jerusalem. By 2007, the route of Wall resulted in the confiscation of land belonging to 19,2% of families living in Jerusalem. The Professor John Dugard, the former UN special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories affirmed "the 75 kilometers of wall being built in East Jerusalem is an instrument of social engineering designed to achieve the Judaization of Jerusalem, by reducing the numbers of Palestinians in the city." Over the course of the occupation, Israel has expropriated over 60 square kilometers of Palestinian land in East Jerusalem, all of which have been converted exclusively to Jewish use.

Internationally recognized by the United Nations as an "occupied territory", the practice of demolitions of Palestinian houses in Jerusalem is not legal. However, under the Israeli law, facts differ on the ground. A construction built without permit is illegal. And in large parts of East Jerusalem, no building permits are obtainable due to the inability to meet the strict and practically impossible conditions required by the municipality. As permits are very rarely granted, many Arab Jerusalemites choose to construct buildings without permits, which provides the Ministry of Interior and the Municipality the judicial pretext to demolish the Palestinian homes.

To implement their policy on the ground, financial offers are also used. Twice, Fawwazieh was offered indecent amounts of money by Israeli settlers to sell her house. In 2004 and 2005, the settler's lawyer offered her 10 million dollars and the Israeli Ministry of Tourism 15 million dollars if she would leave. "But for all the money in the world we won't leave", she repeats firmly.

 
For three weeks, she has been living in a haphazard tent on an empty piece of land, down the street from her previous family house. By three times, the tent has been destroyed by Israeli settlers and soldiers Picture: Palestine Monitor But on the 9th of November, they were forced to. That night, Muhammad and Fawwazieh Al were the only ones home, while an international solidarity group of 5 people were sleeping in a tent outside the house. At around 3.30 A.M, Israeli soldiers and policemen entered the room where the couple was sleeping and ordered them to leave the house. "I was worried for my husband, because his health was very unstable", she tells. Abu Kamal was bedridden, but the Israeli forces forced them to stand up, and pushed him back on the bed.

The soldiers and the police lead her and Abu Kamal to the street where, now homeless, they were taken in by their neighbors. Abu Kamal was in a critical state on the night of the eviction. He had a heart attack and had to be taken to the hospital. "The Israeli police prevented the ambulances from reaching our home and my husband", she tells. "Now that I have lost him, I want justice back. I want them to be judged for what they say."

Muhammad Al Kurd was 62 years-old when he passed away in the hospital. He did not survive the eviction of his family. He was already ill, but the eviction and the Israeli forces' destruction of the tent where they were living since the eviction will surely have played a role. "He was extremely exhausted", his wife reported, "after the eviction, he was under shock and his heart disorders worsened."

Today, Umm Kamal is living in the tent alone, helped by neighbors and solidarity activists. She is intending to win a legal case regarding the eviction, and to get her house back. UNRWA, along with 6 lawyers and international European figures such as Luisa Morgantini, are advocating for her case.