After Israel’s victory in the first Arab-Israel war of 1956, Palestinians sought refuge in the West Bank under Jordan and settled in East Jerusalem. A decade later, in 1967, after a six-day war, Israel occupied the West Bank. While the UN affirmed the occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem has been excluded by the UN’s Security Council resolution 2334.
Regardless, since the capture, Israeli settler organisations have been evicting families off of their ancestral land for decades in East Jerusalem backed by the force of the Israeli government. According to New York Times, the legal battle over the authority of the land has been dismissed by Israel Courts and “has become emblematic of a wider effort to remove thousands of Palestinians from strategic areas in East Jerusalem.”
In their 2014 article, Evicting Palestine, authors Penny Green and Amelia Smith document how Israel is ‘engaged in a systematic and illegal scheme of forced evictions,’ driving Palestinians out of their ancestral homes to achieve complete colonial control over Palestinian territories. ‘Palestinian people are denied basic human rights and services,’ they say, a claim echoed by many voices as the conflict swells.
In 2016, the UN’s Security Council issued resolution 2334, which unequivocally states that Israel’s settlements in East Jerusalem and other Palestinian territory, occupied since 1967, ‘have no legal validity.’ The resolution also reaffirms, that Israel’s settlements ‘constitute flagrant violation of international law.’
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