World - Reuters
Jews Move Into Crowded Arab District of Jerusalem
Date: Wed, Mar 31, 2004
By Mark Heinrich
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - About 50 ultra-nationalist Jews, some armed, moved into an Arab neighborhood of east Jerusalem Wednesday, sparking clashes over property.
A spokesman for the Jewish group said it was re-establishing in Silwan, a part of east Jerusalem which Israel captured in 1967 and later annexed, a community of Jews from Yemen ousted by Arab riots before the Jewish state's founding in 1948.
Palestinians assailed it as a land grab.
More than 170,000 Jews have moved into east Jerusalem since 1967 to cement Israel's claim to the entire city as its historic capital while Palestinians envisage the city's eastern half as capital of their own future state in Israeli-occupied territory.
Arab neighbors said dozens of Jews, some with assault rifles, slipped into the densely packed district in the middle of the night and thrust their way into a new six-story residential block and part of a nearby, older family compound.
Israeli police arrested nine Arab residents after scuffles broke out and stone-throwing lightly injured six officers. Petrol bombs were found on a rooftop, police spokesman Gil Kleiman said.
Awad Ragabi, whose family had owned and lived in much of the compound for generations, said he and two sons were beaten up and ousted from an upstairs flat he had bought from a local Palestinian and was renovating for relatives.
He rejected the settlers' insistence that they had bought the properties legally from a local Arab landlord.
"This is our flat. I spent all my savings on buying it three weeks ago. The settlers have no right to be here, sitting on top of us," he said tearfully, showing reporters what he said was the sale document dated March 8.
OWNERSHIP ROW
Daniel Lourie, spokesman for the Committee for the Renewal of the Yemenite Village in Shiloah, the area's Hebrew name, said Jews legally purchased the properties from a local Arab. More deals were pending with willing Arab sellers, he added.
"In a nutshell, the Yemenite Jews are returning home, 66 years after being driven out by Arab pogroms. This is just the start of what is part of the Zionist dream," the Australian-born Israeli said on the roof terrace of the fortified compound.
"We are not and will not be forcing any Arabs out," he said. "Arabs and Jews lived together here before 1938 and there's no reason they can't again."
Palestinians say conflict with Israel will not end without a halt to what they call the "Judaisation" of east Jerusalem, marked by decades of expansion of Jewish settlements to block the development of Arab neighborhoods.
Israel see areas of east Jerusalem into which Jews have moved since 1967 as city neighborhoods but the neighborhoods, like Jewish enclaves throughout the West Bank and Gaza, are viewed abroad as illegal settlements built on conquered land.
For many years, Palestinians have been denied permits to build adequate housing in east Jerusalem for their growing population. Israeli city authorities have demolished Arab homes built without permits.
SOURCE
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