The Palestinian residents of Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah today rejected an Israeli court’s ruling delaying their forced expulsion from their houses.

Residents of the neighborhood, which became a scene of massive protests against Israel’s settler-colonialism in the occupied territories, said in a press statement that they unanimously rejected the “compromise” proposed by the Israeli occupation court under which they shall be “protected tenants”, not the owners of their property, while pointing that the “compromise” recognizes the ownership of the settler-colonial group Nahalat Shimon to the land and paves the way for stripping them of their ownership right to their lands.

The families added that their decision to reject the “compromise” stems from “our belief in the justice of our cause and our right to our homes and our homeland”. They pointed that rather than submit to an unjust “offer”, they would rely on the “Palestinian street” to raise international awareness of their plight.

They said that the evasion of a final ruling on the case “is a continuation of the ]Israeli[ colonial policies designed to divert attention from the most grave crime, namely the  ethnic cleansing ]of the Palestinian people[ at the hands of the Israeli occupation and settlers.”

“We do not accept the promotion of an image of the occupation as being just and will not accept half solutions,” they stressed.

They held the Israeli occupation authorities fully responsible for dispossessing them and called on the international community to deter Israeli courts from issuing rules that are in favor of their dispossession and forcible transfer, a war crime under international law.

Source : Safa