Diab family appeal: Supreme Court freezes the decision to evict the family's homes in Sheikh Jarrah, sets hearing for next month
The Israeli Supreme Court set a date on Tuesday to consider the Diab family's appeal against the decision to evict them from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem in favor of settlers.
Saleh Diab stated that the hearing to consider the appeal against the eviction order will be held on June 5, 2025. Accordingly, the court froze the eviction order issued by the District Court, which was scheduled to be implemented on May 20 of this year.
In February 2025, the District Court had rejected the family's appeal against the Magistrate's Court's decision to evict them from their homes in favor of settlers, thus upholding the Magistrate's Court's decision.
The Magistrate's Court issued the eviction order in mid-April 2024 and gave the family until July of the same year to implement it. Consequently, the family filed a new appeal, and a hearing was held in the District Court to consider it. Saleh Diab pointed out that the family has lived in their homes for more than fifty years, and began its legal struggle to prove its right to them in 2009.
The Diab family homes are located in the Karm al-Jaouni neighborhood in Sheikh Jarrah, where 28 refugee families have lived since 1956 under an agreement between the Jordanian government, represented by the Ministry of Construction and Reconstruction, and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). The agreement stipulated the provision of housing for these families in exchange for relinquishing their relief cards. One of the conditions of the agreement was the payment of a nominal fee, with ownership of the homes transferred to the residents after three years. However, this was never implemented.
Several years after the occupation of Jerusalem in 1967, Israeli authorities began persecuting the neighborhood's residents and demanding their eviction from their homes, citing land ownership. Jewish organizations claim ownership of the land on which the Karm al-Jaouni neighborhood is located, claiming that it was registered in their favor in 1972.
