Ateret Cohanim Jewish organization Thursday forcefully took over a Palestinian-owned building in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, according to Wadi Hilweh Information Center (WHIC).Nowhere does this article say that Jews stole the properties. They bought them and the Arab owners made a lot of money. (The Silwan website admits this explicitly.)
WHIC said some 60 Israeli settlers broke into the area before dawn and broke into a Palestinian-owned building, claiming they had purchased it from a Jerusalemite Palestinian named Jamal Sarhan. The settlers declared the building a Jewish property.
According to WHIC, Sarhan earlier asked the tenants, all of whom are Palestinians, to leave their apartments by force in order to make way for the settlers. It said while most of the Palestinian tenants were forced to leave, one of them refused to leave his apartment and tried change the doors’ locks. The settlers, nevertheless, were able to open the locks and enter the premises.
According to local sources, Sarhan is a high-profile broker who in recent years attempted to pass the ownership of several Palestinian properties to Jewish organizations.
Maher Abdel-Wahed, Palestinian owner of an adjacent building, said the settlers’ takeover of the nearby building would likely endanger the remaining Palestinian-owned homes in the area, making a reference to the recent upscale in attacks by Jewish fanatics on Palestinians.
Abdel-Wahed urged the local Jerusalemite community in Silwan to act with no mercy against those who sell their property to Jewish settlers, since this could undermine the Arab and Palestinian presence in the city.
Recently, Jewish organizations, including Ateret Cohanim, forcefully took over multiple Arab-owned buildings in Silwan. This came amid reports of an increasing number of high profile sales of Palestinian homes to Jewish organizations in East Jerusalem.
Palestinian government and civil society organizations have at times considered all those who sell their property to Jewish settlers or settler organizations as “traitors”.
In October 2014, President Mahmoud Abbas toughened the penalty for citizens selling property to Israelis by imposing a sentence of hard labor for life on “anyone diverting, renting or selling land to an enemy state or one of its subjects.”
In the closing statement of a Ramallah conference on October 2014, Fatah’s Revolutionary Council accused Palestinians who sold their property of “high treason,” calling on the government and legal system to “take the necessary steps to deter them.”
The movement also called on the public to “boycott and humiliate them on all popular levels.”
“Those whose sick souls allowed them to sell their land or homes, or enable such sales to the enemies of the Palestinian people, are a gang of traitors to their nation and religion,” said Fatah spokesman Osama al-Qawasmi in a statement previously published by WAFA. “They have brought shame and scorn upon themselves in this world and in the afterlife.”
“One would rather die than sell his honor and betray the most sacred land in the world, saturated with the blood of prophets and martyrs throughout history,” he said. “Those traitors are destined to die a humiliating death.”
But apparently the progressives of the world believe that Jews should be banned from buying homes in some Jerusalem neighborhoods. And Arab laws to imprison people selling buildings to Jews does not evoke the slightest angst.
Let's be honest: the world uproar when these things happen isn't about Israelis. It's all about Jews.
Israeli Arabs can buy houses in all parts of Jerusalem without protest, and indeed thousands of them do.
But the EU, the UN and the people who supposedly are in the forefront against discrimination want to ban Jewish purchases of homes in their holiest city.
#Jewish #settlers take over homes in #Arab part of #Jerusalem http://t.co/wrXCUxl34m #JewishSettlements RT pic.twitter.com/waaBbrv34d— Chris Gunness (@ChrisGunness) August 27, 2015
(h/t Bob K)