Al-Kurd Family Timeline: Key Events
1948: Al-Kurd family lost their home due to the nakba (Arabic for catastrophe, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced to abandon their homes in the creation of the Israeli state).
1956: Al-Kurd family given home in East Jerusalem by UN and Jordan, as reparation and part of a resettlement plan for refugees.
1972: Jewish settlers register fraudulent claim to ownership of al-Kurd property with Israeli Land Registrar.
1999: Israeli authorities seize two-thirds of al-Kurd home on the grounds that the al-Kurd family had no permit to make modifications to their home.
2001: Jewish settlers move into that part of the al-Kurd home that had been seized by Israel, while the family was at the hospital following the heart attack of the patriarch of the family, Mohammed al-Kurd. They were given the keys to the house by the Israeli government.
2006: Court voids the claim of the settlers to the land, on the grounds that the documents were fraudulent. Settlers continue to press their case against the al-Kurd family, demanding that they pay rent to the settler organization.
July, 2008: A different court orders eviction of the al-Kurd family from their home of 53 years, because they refused to pay rent to the settlers.
Nov., 2008: The al-Kurd family is evicted. Settlers continue to live in their house. The settlers, too, have an eviction notice, from a legal case brought against them by the al-Kurd family, but no action is taken to enforce this order. Fawzia al-Kurd erects a tent on private property near her home, to live there in protest, along with international volunteers. (Mohammed is too ill to participate.) The Israeli army repeatedly tries to get her to leave through fines and periodically destroying the tent. She remains.
Nov., 2008: Mohammed al-Kurd dies of a heart attack, two weeks after the eviction.
THOU SHALT NOT STEAL
Al-Kurd Family History
......................................................................................................................
Israeli police evicted Fawzia and Mohammed al-Kurd from their home in East Jerusalem early in the morning of Nov. 9 and arrested seven international guests of the family, including one American. The U.S. embassy had previously expressed concern to Israel over plans to evict the family. The decision paves the way for the takeover of 26 multi-story houses in the neighborhood, threatening to make 500 Palestinians homeless.
The eviction also led to the death of Mohammed, who had suffered from diabetes and heart problems. The stresses of the eviction and of being homeless proved too much for him, and he died of a heart attack on Nov. 23.
The al-Kurd family has lived in the house since 1956, when they were given the house as part of a resettlement plan for Palestinian refugees. Their house, along with 27 other houses, was constructed jointly by Jordan and the United Nations for families that had been displaced and made homeless in 1948, when Israel was created.
Claiming that they had purchased the land from a previous Ottoman owner in the 1800s, Jewish settlers claimed ownership of the land following the occupation of East Jerusalem after the 1967 "six-day" war. In 1972, settlers successfully registered this claim with the Israeli Land Registrar. While the al-Kurd family continued legal proceedings challenging the settlers' claim, the settlers started filing their own suits against the Palestinian family.
In 2006, an Israeli court ruled the settlers' claim void, recognizing it was based on fraudulent documents. Subsequently, the al-Kurd family lawyer petitioned the Israeli Land Registrar to revoke the settlers' registration of the land and identify the correct owner of the land. Although the petition was granted, the Israeli Land Registrar refused to register the rightful owner.
To further complicate the al-Kurd situation, settlers began occupying two-thirds of their home in 2001, when Mohammed was in the hospital being treated for heart disease and his family was with him. The settlers were given the keys to the al-Kurd family home by the local Israeli municipality. The al-Kurd family had remodeled their house the previous year to enable their son and his family to live with them. The municipality confiscated the keys to the remodeled portion, declaring that it was illegal for the family to remodel their own house, and then handed the keys over to Israeli settlers.
In July 2008, the Israeli Supreme Court ordered the eviction of the al-Kurd family for their refusal to pay rent to the settlers. Although the settlers' claim to the land had been revoked two years earlier, the Supreme Court based its decision on an agreement made between a previous lawyer and the settlers. It should be noted that the al-Kurd family--and the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood as a whole--had never accepted this agreement and fired their legal representative when they discovered what he had done without their knowledge or consent.
When the al-Kurd family was evicted on Nov. 9, the squatter settlers living in part of their home were allowed to remain in the house, despite their own eviction order.
The Jewish settlers’ association, Nahlat Shemoun, has published a proposal to demolish the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, including the al-Kurd family home, and build 200 settlement units for Jews.
The European Union describes the Israeli government’s actions in East Jerusalem as discriminatory and illegal under international law.
An excellent article by Jonathan Cook describes the relationship of this case to that of others in East Jerusalem and other parts of Palestine.
The al-Kurd family organized their neighborhood to try to prevent the theft of their own home, as well as that of others in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, by settlers in collusion with the Israeli government.