If you're after a microcosm on the entire Israeli-Palestinian conflict, look no further than East Jerusalem. In the past year, hundreds of Palestinians - many of whom have been living there for decades - have been displaced by evictions and demolitions carried out by the Israeli authorities. This week, after another round of evictions, the UN called for "an immediate and unconditional halt", asserting that the Israeli evictions run counter to international law. The Obama White House, desperate to re-ignite the stumbling peace process, described this week's events as 'unhelpful'. For some months, Dateline's Sophie McNeill has been filming in this hotly disputed part of the city that both Jews and Palestinians claim as theirs.

 

 

 

REPORTER: Sophie McNeill

 

 

East Jerusalem is at flashpoint. Armed Israeli settlers have reportedly barricaded themselves inside this apartment, in the Muslim quarter of the Old City. But this man, a 38-year-old Palestinian travel agent called Nasser Jaber says it's his apartment and that he can prove it.

 

NASSER JABER: I phoned the police, nothing happened. They took me to the police station and ask me about my papers and leave all the people inside this house! This is the situation. This is the police - they help them.

 

CROWD (Translation):  Why is his ID? I know him.  He’s got a house here. I know him.  He lives there.  no one, not even a prophet will go inside!

 

The crowd is angry that the police have made no attempt to remove the people they claim have broken into and taken over the apartment.

 

NASSER JABER (Translation): Do you want a massacre here?  You can't stop people's lives. It's not fair what you're doing. You should maintain the law, not make people's lives difficult.

 

Nasser Jaber says the apartment was empty at the time because it was being renovated. He's furious that the settlers have not been removed, and angered by what appears to be the Israeli police helping the people inside by delivering them food.

 

DANIEL LURIA: He doesn't have the same sort of feeling or devotion or roots here. An Arab has his roots here maybe 30, 40, 50, 70 years. Jews have had their roots here for 3,000 years. This belongs to the Jewish people.  So, we're just entering the gates of the Old City, the famous Lions' Gate.

 

Israeli Daniel Luria is head of the ultra-nationalist religious group Ateret Cohanim. Their aim is to buy up as much Palestinian property in East Jerusalem as they can, and to move Jewish families in.

 

DANIEL LURIA: A Jew not only has the right, a Jew should be compelled to buy. For generations, all Jews could do from around the world was sprinkle a little bit of dust from the Mount of Olives in his grave. Today, we have the ability, we have returned home. The words of the prophecies have come to fruition. We are living a dream here.

 

The Old City is this ex-Australian resident's passion, and he's committed to increasing the Jewish presence here.

 

DANIEL LURIA: Jewish life has, once again, been rekindled.

 

Luria is taking me to see one of the properties Ateret Cohanim has bought in the old Muslim Quarter.

 

DANIEL LURIA (Translation):  Daniel Luria of Ateret Cohanim. Can you tell the guard I'm arriving and to open the gate? Thank you very much.

 

An Islamic ruling or 'fatwa' calls for any Palestinian who sells land to a Jew to be sentenced to death, so settler groups use covert methods to acquire property here.

 

DANIEL LURIA: One has to be very careful how it takes place. Whether it be using Arab middlemen or moving Arabs overseas………

 

Ateret Cohanim will often pay highly inflated prices. Any chance to buy is jumped at. The organisation found this property after dialling the wrong phone number one day.

 

DANIEL LURIA: …. and he ended up getting an Arab who was in the process of selling his house,  so we organised a job overseas, in America somewhere, because he wanted that for is own protection. We ended up buying the place, giving him a job overseas, and ended up with this building in our hands because of a wrong phone number.

 

JEWISH POLICEMAN (Translation):  Talk to me like that one more time and I'll take you in. Don't touch me! Don't touch me!

 

Nasser Jaber believes it is Daniel Luria's organisation, Ateret Cohanim, that has taken over his apartment. A call comes from the courthouse where he's fighting to get the property back.

 

NASSER JABER (Translation):  So what happened with the lawyer? Hasn't he spoken to you yet?

 

The settlers are claiming they purchased the property.

 

NASSER JABER (Translation):  The judge can't make a decision until Sunday. The police say they'll act on court orders. Thank God I have the documentation that I need for the house.

 

According to Nasser Jaber, a few years ago, Ateret Cohanim tried to buy the apartment using an Arab middleman. But Jaber says, when he found out it was going to settlers, he didn't go through with the sale.

 

NASSER JABER (Translation):  They sent several intermediaries to try and buy the house. They tried more than once to buy the house, and I refused. This is against my religion and sharia law and our political situation. It's impossible for this to happen.

 

I asked Daniel Luria from Ateret Cohanim, but he said he couldn't comment on any particular incident. And when I contacted the settler's lawyer, Mr Avi Sigal, he told me he also couldn't respond to our questions, except to say his clients had purchased the apartment. Nasser Jaber can't believe they are now claiming to own the property.

 

NASSER JABER (Translation):  If I had sold the house, then now why did they break into it at 2:30am?

 

The police tell Nasser Jaber they will not remove the settlers until the court orders them to do so. Two more Israelis then arrive claiming to be security protection for the settlers. The police help one of them in and the crowd blocks the other.

 

CROWD YELLING (Translation):   There is no access at all! Go on, go! Go!

 

Nasser Jaber's taken to the police station again, while his relatives vow to block anyone else entering the apartment.

 

NASSER'S UNCLE: I stand till the morning. All this night and till the morning, I waiting here.

 

And this man is also determined to tighten Israel's grip on the east of the city, one house at a time. Arieh King describes himself as a Zionist real estate agent.

 

ARIEH KING: Today, just Arabs living here but, again, we are now in the process of bringing back the Jewish presence to the area.

 

Along with groups like Aterat Cohanim, King tries to secure as much property as he can in East Jerusalem in order to turn Arab areas into Jewish neighbourhoods.

 

ARIEH KING: What you see here, we are now renovating here apartments for the Jews to move in. I believe in a matter of a week, the first Jews will move in here.

 

Today, there are hundreds of Jewish families living in settlements like this in East Jerusalem. King hopes this will make it impossible for Israeli politicians to ever consider giving up this half of the city to the Palestinians.

 

ARIEH KING: If we want to make their life difficult and to make their programs of dividing the city difficult, we need to bring Jews to all over Jerusalem. We are already succeeding. We are already in much better situation than we were 10 years ago, 20 years ago and 30 years ago and 42 years ago.

 

Settler groups are increasingly using the Israeli court system as a means of acquiring new properties in the east.

 

ARIEH KING: And if you continue through here, what is left of the synagogue. Today, unfortunately, Arabs are living inside the synagogue.

 

Arieh King claims that up to 800 properties in this part of East Jerusalem were originally owned by Jewish families, abandoned when they fled the East in 1948 after the city was divided.

 

ARIEH KING: You see the steps there going up to the roof. these steps were taking the women to the women's section of the synagogue.

 

King spends hours studying old land deeds and tracking down what he claims are the rightful Jewish owners. He then lodges cases in Israeli courts to evict the Palestinian families currently living there.

 

ARIEH KING: We will take care of evicting the squatters and we will renew this place as a synagogue.

 

And this is the result of one such court case. 57-year-old Fawzia Al Kurd now lives in this tent. Last November, she and her husband were evicted from the house his family had lived in for over 50 years. Today, Palestinian journalists have come to record her story.

 

MRS AL KURD (Translation):   I married in 1970, had my children, married them off and became a grandmother in it. They still evicted us. Then my husband died.

 

Her husband died of a heart attack soon after they were evicted, and she blames his death on the stress of losing their home.

 

MRS KURD (Translation):  It's a tragedy for us. People are dying without having their rights restored.

 

Israeli settlers won a court case, claiming Jews had owned the land in the early 19th century. They now live in Mrs Kurd's old home.

 

MRS KURD (Translation):  I built it with my own hands. How could it be theirs?

 

Mrs Al Kurd takes me to West Jerusalem to see the land her father used to own before 1948. She's outraged at what she sees as a double standard. That Jews are allowed to take back land they claim to have owned before 1948 in East Jerusalem, but Palestinians can't claim land they say they owned in the west of the city.

 

 

MRS AL KURD (Translation):  This was an Arab house. And this was an Arab house, and this one, too.

 

This is where her father used to own land in West Jerusalem. Her family fled when Israel was created in 1948 and have never been allowed to claim their property back.

 

MRS AL KURD (Translation):  They left their homes as though they were displaced. They didn't take any clothes, documents, keys...anything. When they wanted to return, they blocked the road.

 

Andy David is with the Israeli Foreign Ministry. I asked him why the thousands of Palestinians who claim to hold titles to property inside Israel are not allowed to take their land back.

 

ANDY DAVID: For a very simple reason - there was a war. The war was forced on Israel. And I think it's also time for people to stop whining. You know, you start a war and then you lose, and then you whine about it, that you should be compensated for your aggression. Well, we're talking about people who were involved in hostile activities against the newborn Israel, at that time. We're talking about armies who were asking their people to just "Move aside, let us slaughter all the Jews "and then you can come back to your homes."

 

Meanwhile, down at the district courthouse, Nasser Jaber is waiting for a hearing on his case. The settlers are still barricaded in his apartment.

 

NASSER JABER (Translation):  If we need your testimony, I'll call you as witnesses to testify that you are my neighbours and know me from the Jaber family, and that no other family lived in the house before.

 

MAN (Translation):   His father was born in it and lived in it until he was 100.

 

He's confident that, by the end of the day, he'll be back in the apartment.

 

NASSER JABER: I think everything will be OK because I have all my document and everything will be fine.

 

While Nasser Jaber maintains his faith in the courts, this press conference has been called after another court decision in favour of Israeli settlers. 30 more Palestinian families now face eviction.

 

MAN: The latest legal developments mean that the Rawi family and the Hannoun family are in danger of immediate eviction and, really, the Israeli courts here operate in a political manner, rather than in a strict legal manner

 

Roy Dickinson is a European Union diplomat. He's calling on the Israeli Government to reverse the eviction orders.

 

ROY DICKINSON, EU DIPLOMAT: Essentially today, as the speakers pointed out, this is a political problem. Therefore, the European Union, in the spirit of Annapolis, in the spirit of the road map, takes the view that Israel should not implement house demolitions and evictions as it severely compromises progress on the peace process.

 

ANDY DAVID: Those homes were not the property of the people who were claiming to be living there, those Arab families. They were the property of Jewish families.

 

Andy David denies there is any political motive behind house evictions in East Jerusalem. He says it's an internal legal issue that has nothing to do with the peace process.

 

ANDY DAVID: That was not an action by the state, it was an action by the courts. The courts decided that this property does not belong to the Palestinian inhabitants, but to the Jewish ones.

 

Earlier this year, the Israeli municipality approved plans to tear down 88 buildings here, in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Silwan, leaving some 1,500 Palestinians homeless. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke out against the plan, labelling Israeli demolitions and evictions as 'unhelpful' to the peace process. But, just weeks after Clinton's call, this demolition took place in the Old City.

 

PALESTINIAN LADY (Translation):  It's unjust. What can I say? God is my best guardian.

 

The Israeli authorities said the apartment was demolished because it was built without approval - 1 of around 100 Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem destroyed by the municipality each year.

 

PALESTINIAN WOMAN (Translation):  They demolish and we build. It's our country, our ancestors' land. We won't go. We're staying here.

 

 COUNCIL OFFICIAL: OK.

 

 LADY (Translation):  Finished? Finished?

 

The family are told they must clean up the rubble from the demolition or they will be fined $200 for each day it's not removed.

 

SON (Translation):   Is this my problem?

 

COUNCIL OFFICIAL (Translation):  Why are you so aggressive? I'm trying to help you.

 

 SON (Translation):   It's not your house being demolished.

 

COUNCIL OFFICIAL (Translation):  I didn't build it illegally.

 

SON (Translation):  Please let's just leave it. Go on and take it all. Take it. We're biding our time. Take my word for it. We're biding our time. We're biding our time and one day we'll eat you alive.

 

It's now been over six months since Nasser Jaber's found himself forced out of his apartment. The court still hasn't ruled on his case and Jabber says he's now lost hope in the Israeli justice system.

 

NASSER JABER (Translation):   If I go now to my house with all the evidence I need in court and break in, will the Israeli police and courts deal with me like they dealt with them? Bring me food and drink and not sent me to jail? But when it's Jews and Arabs, there is no justice. It might be fair if it's about buying a car or if it's a financial dispute, But if it's anything to do with settling or Israeli-Palestinian real estate, then I assure you the justice system is not fair.

 

It's daybreak on a Sunday morning, and the families who had called the press conference to publicise their eviction now know their struggle has been in vain. A series of appeals through the courts has failed. Two of those families, the Al Rawis and the Hanouns, are being thrown out. They have lived here for over 60 years.

 

HANNOUN, DAUGHTER: They coming in the morning They've broken all the doors. They don't let me take my stuff. They fight all my cousins and my brothers. They say for us go out.

 

 Israeli authorities forcibly remove the families' belongings.

 

US DIPLOMAT: I need to get in and see what's going on, on behalf of my government

 

A diplomat from the American Consulate arrives at 7am to try and talk to the families, but he's not allowed through.

 

US DIPLOMAT: I'd like to get in and see what's going on.

 

 

ISRAELI SOLDIER: It's not possible to get inside.

 

US DIPLOMAT: Is there any chance, who can I talk to? Who can I get authorisation from?

 

The American diplomat, political officer Kyler Knonmiller, refuses to comment on camera but, speaking in Arabic, commiserates with local residents.

 

US DIPLOMAT (Translation):  I'm really sorry about what happened, but at least their health is okay, there's no problem there.

 

MAN (Translation):  Thank God.

 

US DIPLOMAT (Translation):  I'm sorry.

 

MAN (Translation):    No problem.

 

US DIPLOMAT (Translation):  Yes, there is a problem but I...

 

MAN (Translation):  If there was real justice, the government wouldn't do this, but this is all mafia work.

 

US DIPLOMAT (Translation):  It's very hard.

 

SETTLER (Translation):  Shall I go up to the Hannoun's?

 

POLICEMAN (Translation):  Yes.

 

Less than two hours after the families are evicted, the Israeli police help more than 20 Jewish settlers move into the now empty properties.

 

WOMAN (Translation):  Don't let them in! You should throw them out like you threw us out.

 

MAN (Translation):  What are you saying?

 

WOMAN (Translation):  The Arabs are out and they're in! Is this justice? Why can't America, Britain and all the Arab countries here us? Where is Islam?

 

 JEWISH MAN: We don't care about what the world thinks about what our land is and what our land is not.

 

REPORTER: You don't care what the world thinks?

 

JEWISH MAN: No.

 

REPORTER: Why?

 

JEWISH MAN: Because we are a chosen nation and the world knows that, and God promised us Jerusalem.

 

ORTHODOX MAN (Translation):  Tell your children that everything is from God. Everything is from Allah. Believe me, He won't leave anyone outside.

 

ARAB MAN (Translation):  Give us our land and homes back, then come and take your land and homes.

 

ARAB WOMAN (Translation):  This is not your land. You're not from here. This is our country, our home! You don't know here Allah is. You don't believe in Allah.

 

ARAB MAN (Translation):  God is with us! God is an Arab! Give us back our country and land. Give us back our country and land that you occupied and killed our people for. Get out of here, foreign occupiers! Get out!

 

 

 

Reporter/Camera

SOPHIE McNEILL

 

Producer

ASHLEY SMITH 

 

Fixers

QASEM SABAGH

ALON TUVAL

 

Editors

WAYNE LOVE

DAVID POTTS

 

Translations/Subtitling

JOSEPH ABDO

RUTH MOSS

 

Original Music composed by

VICKI HANSEN