Sheikh Jarrah once again... The Court conditions the Sabbagh family to pay rent to settlers in order to stay in their building
The Jerusalem District Court held a hearing on Tuesday to consider the eviction of the Sabbagh family from their residential building in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.
Saleh Diab, a member of the Sheikh Jarrah Neighborhood Committee, explained that the court judge decided not to evict the family, provided they pay a monthly rent of 4,000 shekels to the Nahalat Shimon settler association.
Diab explained that the seriousness of the decision lies in requiring the family to pay rent to the settler association, which constitutes an implicit recognition of their ownership of the land, unlike previous freeze orders, in which payment was "an annual sum of 2,400 shekels to the court's fund." The family's lawyer requested a two-week period to submit a response to the judge's decision.
In 2019, the Israeli Supreme Court issued a ruling ordering the eviction of the Sabbagh family. However, the defense team relied on legal loopholes that enabled it to return the case to the Magistrates' Court, bringing the case back to court. In 2011, an eviction order for 11 homes in the same neighborhood was also frozen, leading to the family's eviction being frozen in recent years.
Approximately 35 members of the Sabbagh family live in the Sabbagh building. They were displaced from their homes in Jaffa in 1948 and moved to the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in 1956 as part of an agreement between the Jordanian government—represented by the Ministry of Construction and Reconstruction—and UNRWA. The agreement stipulated that 28 refugee families would be housed in the neighborhood in exchange for relinquishing their relief cards, with ownership of the homes to be transferred to them after three years. However, this was not implemented.
After the occupation of Jerusalem in 1967, settler organizations began persecuting the neighborhood's residents and demanding that they vacate their homes, claiming ownership of the land on which the neighborhood is located, alleging that it was registered in their favor in 1972.
The court's ruling today poses a continuing threat to the Sabbagh family, forcing them to choose between remaining in their building in exchange for monthly rent to the settlers, or facing the possibility of future eviction, amidst the complex legal and political reality in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.
