Yesterday August 8 2009 at noon, about 40 ultra-orthodox jewish squatters, the Israeli terrorists generally known as "Siknaj", attacked the tent of the Al-Ghawi family and beat and wounded four members of these families, who were forcibly expelled from their own house on last 2 August 2009.
The criminal settlers, or "Siknaj", were wearing black talars and hats, and used stones, sticks, and chairs in their criminal attack. The victims were three children aged between 10 – 13 and a woman. One of them was left bleeding in critical condition.

Naser Al-Gawi, one of those robbed of his house by the israeli government, said that a large detachment of Israeli police came to the place of the assault, and that rather than preventing the criminal attacks of the Siknaj, they protected them and arrested Khaled Al- Gawi, aged 40, another victim of the israeli theft. Al-Gawi denied that his family had provoked the Siknaj settlers. He said that the settlers wanted to remove their tents, which they set up near their houses, which are now occupied by the siknaj. He confirmed that he will not leave the area until he is able to return to his house.

On August 2 2009, the Israeli criminal forces forcibly terrorized and expelled two Palestinian families, Al-Gawi and Hannoun from their houses in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem after they demolished the gates of the houses (11 houses, eight houses belong to Aberd Al-Fattah Hannoun and his sons, and three houses belong to Maher Hannoun and his brothers), and forced the families to get out under the threat of murdering them. The criminal armed Israeli police pointed their guns at the civilians and denied them the right to take the necessary things for their children, or to remove from their furniture and other belongings.

Few hours after the Palestinian family’s expulsion, a truck of ultra orthodox jews, Siknaj, came to live in the Palestinian houses. The Siknaj and the criminal forces of Israel threw the furniture of the two families out of their homes and moved their belonging of the Siknaj to the Palestinian houses, while the Israeli police stood to guard to protect them from any attempt from the Palestinian families to recover their property. Before that, on November 2008, the Israeli military border police forcibly expelled Mahmoud Al-Kurd, an old paralyzed man on a wheelchair, his wife Fawzia, Um Kamel, and their five children and their families, from their home in Sheikh Jarrah in the East of Jerusalem.

Mohammed Al-Kurd had lived in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood from 1956 until the morning of November 9, 2008 when the Israeli police enforced a court order that evicted them. Few days after this expulsion, Mahmoud Al-Kurd died of heart attack in his protest tent in the neighborhood of his house. The criminal Israeli Zionist organization police has since then destroyed the tent of the Al-Kurd family several times.

The Vice President of the European Parliament, Luisa Morgantini, had sent a letter for Al-Kurd family after their expulsion from their house in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem . She wrote:

Dear all,

you may remember that last Thursday during the plenary session we passed a urgency resolution on the expulsion of the Al Kurd family from the house they bought and lived in since 1956 in East Jerusalem. A group of extremist settlers claimed ownership to that house and 26 other houses in the same neighbourhood, on the basis of an Ottoman title deed dating from 1880, the authenticity of which is doubtful and which is also disputed by United States. The project of the Jewish associations is to build 200 hundreds colonial units that will replace the Palestinian homes.

Mohammed Kamal Al Kurd the husband of Umm Kamal did not survive, yes he was already ill, but the expulsion from the house, and the destruction by the Israeli police of the tents were they were staying after being expelled from their home , has been unbearable to him. He died in the Hospital.
Best regards,

Luisa Morgantini
Vice President of the European Parliament

Currently, a total of around 28 Palestinian families of East Jerusalem face Israeli expulsion from their homes in Al- Shiekh Jarrah neighborhood. The Palestinian families had lived in their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood since the days when east Jerusalem was under Jordanian control. The United Nations upon contract with Jordan allotted them the land after they became refugees when they were expelled from their homes in west Jerusalem by Zionists during the 1948 war.

Despite the UN and the Palestinian denials, and despite the fact that the lawyer of the Sheikh Jarrah families found that there is no evidence in the Turkish archives that the Siknaj are the owners of the land and the houses, the Israeli Supreme Court ordered the expulsion of the Palestinian families following an appeal by the Zionists Nahalat Shimon settler group, which claimed that the Siknaj lived in, or bought plots in these areas before the establishment of Israel itself and by the partition resolution of 1948.

Two third of the houses in the West of Jerusalem belong to Palestinian families whose owners are denied the right to retake them. Some of these owners have appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court to regain their property, but always this court has always rejected their appeals, thus in fact creating injustice and supporting crimes.

What the Israeli Supreme Court and the Zionists organization "State of Israel" must remember and never forget is that we are all the Palestinians will NEVER give up and never forget, and that FOR EVER there are tens of thousands, millions of us who have their land and the homes in occupied Palestine, since 1948 and prior to that, and that we have the documents which prove our ownership.

Over 750.000 of us Palestinians were forcibly expelled in 1948 by the Israeli Zionists, turning us into refugees in Arab countries and in the Diaspora, and that also millions of us live in the occupied West Bank, Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip. We all have the right to return and to ask about our property. The Siknaj will be institutionalized, the whole criminal enterprise called "Israel" will go, and after that ALL jews of the world will be forever held in contempt everywhere, even in countries where today they are highly respected.[Kawther]

There are many houses and land belonging to Palestinians, which since 1948 – and until now, have been stolen and occupied by these European and American jews, which today are occupied by Israeli ministers. One of these thieves is the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who lives in a house stolen from a Palestinian family in the Al-Talibia Arab district in the west of Jerusalem.

The Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem was built by the UN and Jordanian government in 1956 to house Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war. In 1967 Israel captured and illegally annexed Jerusalem during the six day war. We Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be the capital of a future state that includes the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and so it will be with or without the consent of the Siknaj, who better start packing.