Israeli police close off Sheikh Jarrah in Jerusalem

Ever since a Palestinian driver crashed his car May 16 into a police roadblock and injured a number of Israeli policemen, the Israeli forces have locked down the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, where 28 families face the risk of eviction and forced displacement, by erecting concrete barriers on all sides of the neighborhood. They have been preventing foreign and Palestinian activists showing solidarity with residents from entering the neighborhood, allowing only the residents to enter and exit the neighborhood based on their identity cards.

The neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah is located on the eastern side of Jerusalem’s Old City and was built outside the walls of the city. In 1956, 28 Palestinian refugee families who were displaced in 1948 were accommodated in the neighborhood under an agreement signed between the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and the Jordanian government.

The neighborhood is estimated to stretch over 808 dunams (20 acres), its population is estimated at approximately 2,800, and it is run by the Israeli municipality in Jerusalem.

Sheikh Jarrah has always been a recurrent flashpoint in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Several Palestinian families were expelled from that neighborhood in 1948. In 1972, Jewish associations claimed that they possessed documents of ownership of the lands on which the neighborhood houses were built. According to the Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jewish committees, these documents date back to the late 19th century.