JERUSALEM: Palestinian families with property deeds dating back to 1948 denied access to homes in West Jerusalem

Record ID: 572433

  • Title: JERUSALEM: Palestinian families with property deeds dating back to 1948 denied access to homes in West Jerusalem
  • Date: 14th May 2010
  • Summary: JERUSALEM (FILE- AUGUST 2009) (ORIGINALLY 4:3) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF POLICE VEHICLES IN SHEIKH JARRAH NEIGHBOURHOOD OF EAST JERUSALEM EVICTING PALESTINIAN FAMILIES FROM HOUSES SETTLERS TAKE OVER PALESTINIAN BUILT HOUSE IN EAST JERUSALEM NEIGHBOURHOOD
  • Embargoed: 29th May 2010 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: Legal System,International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVA65YXYL8CZD8DQRQUC8F9N30CQ
  • Story Text: The Museum of the Seam sits on the road that once separated East Jerusalem from West Jerusalem. After the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and prior to the Six Day war in 1967 the area was the flashpoint between Arab and Israel fighters.
    The Museum of the Seam was once the home of the Baramkeh family. Seventy four year-old George Baramkeh remembers the day his father, a famous architect, fled with his family in order to escape the increasing violence in the area.
    On their return, they were denied access to their family home, he says, pointing to a map.
    "It was a station for the army on the border, the border was here. This is the border, this is Jordan, this is Israel. The border line was here, that is why they call it Museum on the Seam," George Baramkeh said.
    George still has the deeds to the house, passed down by his father, and destined to be passed to his children and grandchildren in hopes that one day justice will be done.
    "This is the injustice in the procedure, this is how we feel. They can take property from 100 years ago and we can not get our property back from 32, which is terrible," Baramkeh said.
    Taher Al-Nammari tells a similar story to Baramkeh's. The 77-year-old recalls the house built by his forefathers where he was born. Today the house is a Jewish synagogue, decorated with Israeli flags.
    "This house was built in 1864, considered one of the first houses that were built in this area. The father of my grandfather Muhammad Ibrahim Al Nammari built this house, my father Hashem Al Nammari inherited it and I was born in this house," Al Nammari said.
    He remembers his family home being taken by the Israeli state, then sold to a Jewish organization. His family received nothing from the sale, he says.
    "I have deeds and documents about the properties of this house. The documents explain that the house was confiscated in 1982 and the part of the absentee property was sold to the Jewish religious organization called the Spanish Organization," Al Nammari added.
    The Arab states surrounding British Mandate Palestine went to war in 1947 over a U.N. resolution dividing Palestine into two states, one Jewish, the other Arab. They said it was unfair to lose what they deemed ancestral lands to accommodate Jewish immigrants seeking a state after the Nazi Holocaust, in what the Jews saw as a return to their ancient biblical homeland.
    But Israel was carved from a larger chunk of Palestine than the one allotted to them under the U.N. partition plan, and some 750,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled during the 1947/48 hostilities.
    The Palestinians refer to that entire experience, which also saw the destruction of some 400 Palestinian villages, as the "Nakba" or "catastrophe".
    Today, those who became refugees in 1947-48 make up a Palestinian refugee community of some five million in Arab East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza and abroad.
    East Jerusalem has become the focal point of settler development plans, where both Palestinians and Jews defend their existence in the Holy City.
    A seven year absentee law is used to take over Palestinian homes and lands in Jerusalem. Meanwhile, the Israeli court has ruled in favour of Jewish settlers who claimed ownership of the land on which 28 Palestinian families, in Sheikh Jarah, are living. They said the land was originally owned by Jews, dating ownership back to the 19th century.
    Palestinians dispute the claim of the Jewish settler group's ownership of the land. Along with this, they say, Israeli authorities do not allow them to return to homes from which they fled or were forced to flee in the 1948 Middle East war.
    Settlers have already moved into six other buildings in Sheikh Jarrah, now home to consulates and trendy restaurants.
    Armed men guard the stone houses where the settlers have hoisted Israeli flags to assert Jewish dominance.
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