Israeli Regime Forces Attack al-Quds Sit-in Held to Protest Forcible Eviction of Palestinian Families

They detained at least three protesters after severely beating them up in front of the Israeli regime’s central court in the occupied East Jerusalem al-Quds, Palestine’s official Wafa news agency reported.

The sit-in was held in solidarity with Salem Ghaith and Jawad Abu Nab who are among hundreds of other Palestinian families threatened with appropriation of their homes in al-Quds’s districts of Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah for the benefit of illegal Zionist settlers.

The court was looking into the case of the two Palestinian families during a hearing on Thursday morning.

“Despite the fact that al-Quds is occupied and illegally annexed and the majority of the population in al-Quds are Palestinians and that Zionist settlers reside illegally in al-Quds, Israeli zoning laws have allocated 35 percent of the land area for the construction of illegal settlement by Israeli settlers, and 52 percent of East al-Quds has been allocated as ‘green areas’ and ‘unplanned areas’ in which construction is prohibited,” said al-Haq, a Ramallah-based defending human rights organization.

Silwan, home to about 33,000 Palestinians, is located outside the walls of the Old City of al-Quds and its sacred sites. Zionist officials have been moving illegal settlers to the neighborhood since the 1980s, and currently, several hundred settlers live illegally there in heavily protected settlement compounds.

The Tel Aviv regime also plans to force out Palestinian families from Sheikh Jarrah in an attempt to replace them with settlers under Israeli court rulings.

'Dangerous escalation'

On Thursday, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, the Spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas who leads the Palestinian Authority, strongly denounced the dangerous Israeli escalation.

Rudeineh condemned the killing of two Palestinian Authority intelligence officers and another Palestinian, a former prisoner, who were shot dead by Israeli regime undercover special forces in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin earlier in the day, Wafa said in a report.

The Palestinian official further warned the Israeli regime that its practices and violations of Palestinian rights, its attacks and daily killings, and its violations of international law would create tensions leading to a dangerous escalation.

Rudeineh also held Tel Aviv responsible for the escalation and its repercussions, urging the international community to provide protection for the Palestinian people.