Palestinian Family Facing Eviction Threatens To Blow Up Disputed Jerusalem Property (with VIDEO)

Several Palestinian residents of a home in east Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood climbed onto a roof on Monday with gas tanks and gasoline, threatening to blow themselves up as they held a tense standoff with the police who came to evict them from the disputed property.

They are among the dozens of Palestinian families in the neighborhood who face eviction based on a property dispute that predates the 1948 establishment of the State of Israel. Israeli Jews who are trying to evict Palestinian residents from properties in the neighborhood say they purchased the land from Jewish trusts and that it was bought by Jews in 1876. But when Jordan took over the territory in the 1948 war, the Jewish residents fled to the Israeli side of the armistice line, and Jordan settled Palestinian refugees, who had fled from Haifa and Jaffa on the Israeli side of the line, in the then-empty homes. In 2017, the Jerusalem Municipality formally seized the property that was to be evacuated today, with the intention of building a special needs school, but the family stayed and continued to operate a plant nursery there. Last year, a Jerusalem court ruled in favor of the municipality and issued an eviction order, which the family has appealed.