A Troy man whose three brothers are literally living on a street in East Jerusalem with their wives and children after being evicted from their homes to make room for Jewish settlers is appealing for support from activists and elected officials in protesting his family’s displacement.

Protesters hold candles during a rally in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem August 10, 2009, in solidarity with Palestinian families who were evicted from their homes there. REUTERS/Baz Ratner

On August 2, Israeli police forcibly evicted two large Palestinian families from their houses in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem.

Sufian Hannon, 61, of Troy, said his relatives were dragged out of their home at 5:10 a.m. that Sunday by uniformed officers.

A video of the incident taken with a mobile phone by Hannon’s niece shows the frantic scene as horns blare, windows break and the family is thrown out.

Hannon said Israeli authorities confiscated the phone, but not before his niece, Noreen Hannoun, 24, an American citizen, posted the video on Facebook.

Hannon said several of the evicted family members are American citizens.

Maher Hannoun (R) sits with his son and daughter at the entrance to their home in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of East Jerusalem June 1, 2009. Israeli settlers took over the home on August 2 after police physically removed the Hannoun and Ghawi families from two houses in the neighborhood, following a disputed eviction order by an Israeli court. REUTERS/Ammar Awad

“It makes me very angry,” said Hannon. “My family lives on the street – no houses, no couches, no restrooms.”
He said some of his nieces and nephews suffered dislocated joints after being physically pulled out of their home.

Hannon’s extended family, three nuclear families living in separate apartments, were removed from one home. The Ghawi family, six nuclear families, were removed from a second home.

Settler and real estate groups claim the land was bought by a Jewish organization more than a century ago, and an Israeli court has ruled in their favor, issuing eviction orders for two of the nine families in the homes earlier this year.

Hannon said the families were granted the property by UNRWA and the Jordanian government in 1956 as refugees after being displaced from their homes in West Jerusalem and Haifa when Israel was established.

Troy resident Sufian Hannon’s three brothers and each of their families have been left homeless in East Jerusalem after being physically removed from their homes because of an Israeli court order granting the property to Israeli settlers. PHOTO: TAAN

A lawyer for the evicted families has secured documents from Turkish government archives dating back to the Ottoman Empire showing that the land was bought by a Palestinian family early in the 20th century.
Hannon said there is no trace of a record confirming the settlers’ claim of a Jewish purchase of the land.

“There wasn’t any deed for them in the Ottoman deeds,” he said. “They forged the document.”

The Israeli courts refused to admit the documents and upheld the eviction orders.

Hannon said Israeli and international human rights activists had been staying in the homes with the families to protest the anticipated displacement since the first eviction order in March.

“They chained themselves to the windows, the bars. These are Jewish people and international peace people,” he said.

Belongings of the evicted families lie in a street after settlers took over the houses with the help of Israeli police, despite pressure from the United States to freeze settlements. PHOTO: Hannoun family

Many were arrested the day of the eviction. More protesters, including Ofra Ben-Artzi, a sister-in-law of Israeli Prime Binyamin Netanyahu, were arrested in later demonstrations and visits to the area.
Violence broke out in the neighborhood on August 9 when members of the Israeli Knesset Ya’acov Katz and Uri Ariel visited a Jewish family that moved into the home of the Gawhi family, sparking clashes between protesters and police.

Hannon, an accounting director for local social services organization the Arab American and Chaldean Council, has written to U.S. Senators and to the White House requesting intervention.

His brother, Maher Hannoun, who was born in the disputed home and now lives under a nearby olive tree, submitted a letter addressed to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem on Monday.

Israeli settlers enter a home in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood on August 2 after Palestinian families were removed from the house following an eviction order by an Israeli court. PHOTO: Hannoun family

“We are very grateful to you for the statements you have made and the action you and your representatives have taken since our eviction a week ago,” Hannoun said in the letter. “However, a week on, we continue to suffer, particularly the women and children.”
Clinton on August 3 called the evictions “deeply regrettable.” She said the move was “not in keeping with Israeli obligations and I urge the government of Israel and municipal officials to refrain from such provocative actions.”

The evictions also garnered condemnation from the European Union and the United Nations.

“Despite condemnation from the international community about the evictions of my neighborhood, Sheikh Jarrah, the Israeli government continues to pursue the ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem,” said Hannoun in a statement. “My family were refugees from 1948 and now we have become refugees again. We were forced out of our homes to make way for settlers, an act that is contrary to international law. The legal case that residents presented in court included an Ottoman-era document which discounts the settler’s claim of ownership of Sheikh Jarrah’s land and homes. But the unjust policies of Israel to Judaize East Jerusalem render our legal proof of ownership irrelevant.”

Hannoun has also developed an extensive website on the crisis, www.StandUpForJerusalem.org, with a collection of videos and news articles on the families’ plight..

The Hannoun and Ghawi homes were not the first in Sheikh Jarrah houses to be taken over. Another family was evicted in 2008. More than 20 other Sheikh Jarrah homes are also facing efforts by the Nahalat Shimon International settler group to claim ownership.

Nahalat Shimon International has not commented and Israeli government offices have placed responsibility for the incident solely onto the court decisions.

“They will evict the other houses,” said Sufian Hannon, who immigrated to the U.S. in 1989. “It’s coming. We know that… I cannot believe how the human rights are being violated. We became refugees again in 2009.”

He said he hopes putting pressure on elected officials to speak up and a swelling of support from local and international human rights groups, coupled with the official U.S. stance against illegal settlement expansion in the West Bank, will help his family find a way to return to their homes.

“We hope that we can make a difference… We have to do anything we can,” he said. “We want somebody to take action – real action… We have hope that the president will fulfill his promise.”