21 Jan 2022; MEMO: Israeli settlers, today, fenced off a plot of land in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of East Jerusalem, reported Wafa news agency.
Along with deputy Jerusalem Mayor, Arieh King, and heavily armed Israeli forces, the settlers barged into the neighbourhood, where they re-installed barbed wire around a plot of land in preparation to seize it.
The land belongs to the Salem family; one of the families that are threatened with forced expulsion from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah.
According to a Wafa correspondent, the intruders physically assaulted members of the Salem family, inflicting fractures on a Palestinian woman's hand.
This comes after Israeli authorities demolished their neighbour, Saliyeh family's home after forced eviction.
Jewish settler groups claim the Palestinian homes were built on land owned by Jews before 1948, claims which official Jordanian and UN documents refute.
The Salem family became refugees in 1948, when some 700,000 Palestinians were forcefully expelled from their homes and land when Israel was founded.
In 1951, the family leased the house under a protected tenancy agreement from the Jordanian Custodian of Enemy Property, which had been established to handle property taken from Jews in areas controlled by Jordan after the 1948 Arab–Israeli war. Israel later seized control of East Jerusalem during the 1967 war.
Extremist Israeli settlers' violence against Palestinians and their property is routine in the West Bank and is rarely prosecuted by the Israeli authorities.
They often coordinate their raids and assaults against Palestinians with Israeli occupation forces, who provide them with cover and protection.
