Israeli courts handing Palestinian properties to Jewish settlers

Israeli courts are increasingly ruling in favour of Jewish settlers in cases against Palestinians in Occupied East Jerusalem.

The Shamasneh family has lived in Jerusalem's Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood for 50 years, but Israeli police have just told them to get out.

The Israeli supreme court has now handed their home over to the 'Israel Land Fund' after it delivered its verdict on a case that began in 2009.

The family says the court did not consider their appeal. "There was a knock on the door at 5:00 AM. I asked who it was, and was told it was the police. We opened the door, the first thing they did was take the gas tank and placed it outside. Then they carried my husband to his chair and took him outside the house. My sons were then taken outside and not allowed to move, They went through our house and left nothing," Fahima Shamasneh explained.

TRT World’s Mohamed Hamayel met the Shamasneh family in occupied East Jerusalem.

The fund claimed their home belonged to a Jewish family before 1948.

Currently, several Israeli organisations including Elad and Ateret Cohaneim have been taking Palestinian families in Jerusalem to court. The organisations say these homes once belonged to Jews, while the Palestinians say this is an attempt to remove them from Jerusalem.

To date, several Palestinian families in Jerusalem have been thrown out of their homes, with similar incidents happening in other areas such as Silwan as well as the Mount of Olives.

In a recent newspaper interview, the director of the Israel Land Fund - who is also a city councilman for Jerusalem - said the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood will have around 400 Jewish families in a matter of years.

"Sheikh Jarrah, or Shimon Hatzadik, is going through a revolution, and we will see its outcome in something like five years," he told the Jerusalem Post.