Memorandum Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood

08/April/2021

Save the families threatened with expulsion from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in Jerusalem from displacement

In implementation of the Israeli government’s decision, on annexing Palestinian lands in
the occupied West Bank, the Israeli Supreme Court issued a deportation of the residents of
the Sheikh Jarrah in the neighborhood of Jerusalem to demolish their homes, despite of the
families possessing the necessary documents confirming their ownership of these
properties. while the occupation government wants to judaize Jerusalem as it considers that
the land was owned to the Jews before 1948.

But the families who established their homes in 1956 were according to an agreement with
the Jordanian government and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for PalestineRefugees (UNRWA), that is, before the Israeli occupation of the city in 1967.
These families are suffering from forced displacement, due to the ethnic cleansing carried
out by the Israeli occupation state, through provocative actions of the Israeli settlers,
insulting and threatening them, and throwing garbage on the residents of this area who are
Palestinians and who have complete documents and documents proving their right to
ownership of these lands.

More than 80 Palestinian families were deported in 1947, in addition to the 1967 war,
nearly 100 people were displaced in 2008, and today more than 126 people are sentenced
by the Israeli occupation authorities to forcible displacement based on the unjust decision
of the Israeli Supreme Court against the Palestinian residents, the originals of this country.
And based on Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention in 1949, which states:
“Individual or mass forcible transfer or deportation of protected persons from occupied
lands to the territory of the occupying power or to the territory of any other state, occupied
or not, is prohibited! regardless of their motives.” And Article 8 (2-b / 8) of the Rome
Statute of the International Criminal Court, which states: “The occupying power, directly
or indirectly, transfers parts of its civilian population to the land it occupies, or deports or
transfers all the inhabitants of the land. Occupied, or parts thereof, inside or outside this
territory.

What the Israeli occupation state is doing is tantamount to a war crime, and it must be
punished immediately by the countries that guaranteed the implementation of the Fourth
Geneva Convention and pledged to respect it based on Article 1 of the Convention.
Therefore, we call on the international community, the European Union and human rights
organisations to assume their full responsibility towards the implementation of the Fourth
Geneva Convention and to take the necessary and immediate measures to prevent a new
catastrophe against the Palestinian people through the displacement of Palestinian families
from the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, and to apply international law and international
legitimacy decisions related to the Palestinian cause.

Union of Palestinian Communities and Institutions and Activities in Europe

Union of Palestinian Communities and Organizations – Europe