The residents of Sheikh Jarrah "unanimously" rejected a compromise offered by Israel's Supreme Court on Tuesday, which would have allowed them to remain in their homes for at least 15 years, in exchange for recognizing the ownership of a settler group and paying them symbolic rent.
Due to their rejection of the offer, the judges will have to reconsider the Palestinian residents' appeal against the original eviction order. Nahalot Shimon, the settlement group with a claim to the land, has also submitted its response to the Supreme Court, but their decision has not yet been made public.
In past days, friction has been growing between residents of the East Jerusalem neighborhood who favored accepting the offer and those who preferred to reject it.
At a press conference on Tuesday, Muna El Kurd, one of the figureheads of the neighborhood's struggle, read the families' statement.
"We unanimously reject the arrangement proposed by the occupation court," she said, arguing the agreement would've "paved the way for the expropriation of the rights to our lands."
El Kurd added that the rejection comes from “our belief in the justice of our cause and our right to our homes and our homeland.” She said that the residents would put their faith in the “Palestinian street” to raise international awareness of their plight.
Under the proposal, the three families facing eviction would be recognized as first-generation protected tenants, meaning they would continue to enjoy the status for two more generations. A fourth family would be deemed a second-generation tenants, meaning one more generation of the family could continue living there as protected tenants. The families would retain the right to prove they have ownership rights to the houses.
The proposal by Justices Isaac Amit, Noam Sohlberg and Daphne Barak-Erez also recommended that the families pay rent to Nahalat Shimon, the nonprofit organization that filed the suit seeking their eviction. “Each family will deposit yearly rent of 2,400 shekels [$750] in the account of the counsel of the Nahalat Shimon Co. The payment will be deposited every year in advance beginning January 1, 2020 and every January 1 thereafter,” according to the plan.
The compromise deal came amid a bitter legal dispute that has garnered worldwide attention over Palestinian rights in the city and played a role in fomenting riots in East Jerusalem last May. If accepted, the justices’ plan would have spared Israel any fallout arising from an eviction order, but the compromise faced strong political opposition from Palestinians and Israeli rightists, both of whom see the dispute as part of a fight over the demographic future of the city.
The Supreme Court case relates to three families, but is estimated to affect all 13 Palestinian families who are vulnerable to eviction. The families were settled in the Jerusalem neighborhood in 1956 by the Jordanian government and the United Nations; settlement organizations have been requesting their eviction for the past two decades, claiming that the land their homes are built on has been owned by Jews since the end of the 19th century.
Nahalat Shimon’s claim goes back to 1876, when Ashkenazi Jews bought a plot of land near the tomb of Shimon Hatzaddik, a Jewish high priest from ancient times. A small Jewish neighborhood was founded on part of the land. They were driven out of the area during the Jordanian occupation in 1948.
Magistrate's and district courts have accepted this argument, and the three families were evicted from their homes. The fight against the eviction of the Palestinians has stirred controversy across the globe, reaching U.S. Congress, European diplomats and the dozens of media teams that were present for the court hearings. The justices proposed the compromise after both sides failed to reach an agreement in the previous hearing.
If the Palestinian families had accepted the compromise, their eviction would have dropped for the agenda for many years. They still retain the possibility of trying to prove their ownership rights to the land in the future through the Land Settlement Office of the Justice Ministry.