Israeli police demolish Palestinian family's home after lengthy standoff
JERUSALEM — Israeli police demolished a Palestinian family's East Jerusalem home Wednesday after a high-profile standoff which saw family members take to the roof in protest.
An "eviction order of illegal buildings" was carried out in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, Israel Police said in a statement, adding that the land will be used to build a school for children with special needs.
The family's lawyer said that the demolition was illegal.
Mahmoud Salhiyeh, 50, who lived in the house with his wife and children, alongside a another house where his sister and her five children lived, took to the roof Monday and was threatening to burn the house down by igniting a gas canister, rather than hand it over to the authorities.
"I will blow myself up, with the house, with the children, with everything," he told NBC News by phone as he stood on the roof with others Monday. He eventually came down.
An excavator came to raze the property to the ground early Wednesday. NBC News saw personal items such as children's books and school bags, family photos, clothes and shoes strewn in the rubble. Israel security forces at the scene prevented the family from retrieving anything.
Police said the eviction was been approved by multiple courts, including the Jerusalem District Court, and that the order was first issued in 2017.
"Members of the family living in the illegal buildings were given countless opportunities to hand over the land with consent, but unfortunately they refused to do so, even after meetings and repeated dialogue attempts by the Jerusalem municipality," a police spokesperson said in a statement.
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The Municipality of Jerusalem says 18 classrooms, 6 kindergartens, sports fields and leisure facilities are set to be built on the land and that the school will be open to local Arab community. The authority accused the family of building illegally on the land.
However, Waleed Abu Tayeh, the Salhiyah family's lawyer, said the order was unlawful and went beyond what had been agreed in court.
"Mahmood was willing to evict his home, but they demolished his house even though they have an eviction order, not a demolition one. This is illegal," he said in a statement Wednesday.
Tayeh also said that the authorities demolished Mahmoud Salhiyeh's sister's house, which was not covered by the order.
However, Fleur Hassan Nahoum, the deputy mayor of Jerusalem, said the order was for both eviction and demolition. She added the police action on Salhiyeh’s sister's house was consistent with the court's order.
NBC News has contacted Israel Police and the Jerusalem Municipality about these claims.
Dozens of longtime Palestinian residents in Sheikh Jarrah are battling efforts by Jewish settlers to evict them from their homes in an area that has been a frequent site of unrest in recent years.
That case, which has been in Israel’s Supreme Court for months, has drawn global attention and fueled last year’s Israeli-Palestinian violence.
The Salhiyah family say they purchased the property before 1967, when Israel captured east Jerusalem, while the state has argued in court that the family does not have rights to the property.
Israel captured east Jerusalem, along with the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Mideast war. It later annexed the eastern half of the city — home to most of Jerusalem’s Palestinian population — in a move unrecognized by most of the international community. The Palestinians seek east Jerusalem as the capital of a future state.
Lawahez Jabari reported from Jerusalem and Patrick Smith from London.
Israel police demolish Palestinian home in east Jerusalem eviction
Israeli police demolished the home of a Palestinian family and arrested at least 18 people as they carried out a controversial eviction order in the sensitive east Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah early Wednesday.
© Menahem KAHANA A Palestinian surveys what remains of the Salhiya family home in Israeli-annexed east Jerusaalem after its demolition by Israeli police
The looming eviction of other families from Sheikh Jarrah in May last year fuelled an 11-day war between Israel and armed Palestinian factions in Gaza.
Before dawn, Israeli officers went to the home of the Salhiya family, who were first served with an eviction notice in 2017.
Jerusalem authorities have said the land will be used to build a school for children with special needs, but the eviction is likely to raise tension in a neighbourhood that has become a symbol of Palestinian opposition to Israeli occupation.
The looming eviction of other families from Sheikh Jarrah in May last year fuelled an 11-day war between Israel and armed Palestinian factions in Gaza.
Before dawn, Israeli officers went to the home of the Salhiya family, who were first served with an eviction notice in 2017.
Jerusalem authorities have said the land will be used to build a school for children with special needs, but the eviction is likely to raise tension in a neighbourhood that has become a symbol of Palestinian opposition to Israeli occupation.
© Menahem KAHANA Israeli police lead away a Palestinian on crutches during the eviction and demolition operation in east Jerusalem's sensitive Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood
Jerusalem deputy mayor Fleur Hassan-Nahoum has said the dispute surrounding the Salhiya home is "totally different" from the events in May, when Palestinians risked being forced to hand over plots of land to Jewish settlers.
Israeli police said they had "completed the execution of an eviction order of illegal buildings built on grounds designated for a school for children with special needs".
"Members of the family living in the illegal buildings were given countless opportunities to hand over the land with consent," a police statement said.
A bulldozer raked through rubble hours after the home was destroyed.
A police spokesman told AFP 18 family members and supporters were arrested for "violating a court order, violent fortification and disturbing public order," but no clashes took place during the eviction.
When police arrived to carry out the order on Monday, Salhiya family members went up to the building's roof with gas canisters, threatening to set the contents and themselves alight if they were forced out of their home.
Police had eventually backed off, but returned early Wednesday amid heavy rainfall in Jerusalem.
Salhiya family lawyer Walid Abu-Tayeh told AFP police had arrested 20 people during the operation, six of them Israeli citizens, with the latter being released, adding that "the Arab detainees were assaulted."
He also confirmed reports that the Palestinian father Mahmud Salhiya is married to an Israeli Jew, named Meital.
In an audio recording distributed to local Arab-language media, Meital, who speaks Arabic, said the family was woken early Wednesday by the sound of loud booms and police had cut the electricity.
"They took me out of the house with my daughter and children who were crying and arrested my husband and all the young men," she said.
- 'Two-time refugees' -
Deputy mayor Hassan-Nahoum said Tuesday the plot that the Salhiya family claim as theirs belonged to private Palestinian owners who then sold it to the city, which allocated it for classrooms for special needs Palestinian children.
A delegation of European diplomats visited the site during the standoff. "In occupied territory, evictions are a violation of international humanitarian law," the head of the European Union's mission to the Palestinian territories, Sven Kuehn von Burgsdorff, told AFP.
Human Rights Watch Israel and Palestine director Omar Shakir called the eviction "cruel" and stressed that the Salhiya family had previously been forced from their west Jerusalem home during Israel's creation in 1948.
Wednesday's eviction made them "two-time refugees", he said.
Hundreds of Palestinians face eviction from homes in Sheikh Jarrah and other east Jerusalem neighbourhoods. Circumstances surrounding the eviction threats vary.
In some cases, Jewish Israelis have lodged legal claims to plots they say were illegally taken during the war that accompanied Israel's creation in 1948.
Israeli law allows Jewish Israelis to file such claims, but no equivalent law exists for Palestinians who lost land during the conflict.
Palestinians facing eviction say their homes were legally purchased from Jordanian authorities who controlled east Jerusalem between 1948 and 1967.
Israel captured east Jerusalem in the Six-Day War of 1967 and later annexed it in a move not recognised by the international community.
More than 200,000 Jewish settlers have since moved into the city's eastern sector, fuelling tensions with Palestinians, who claim it as the capital of their future state.
mk-jjm/bs/kir
Jerusalem deputy mayor Fleur Hassan-Nahoum has said the dispute surrounding the Salhiya home is "totally different" from the events in May, when Palestinians risked being forced to hand over plots of land to Jewish settlers.
Israeli police said they had "completed the execution of an eviction order of illegal buildings built on grounds designated for a school for children with special needs".
"Members of the family living in the illegal buildings were given countless opportunities to hand over the land with consent," a police statement said.
A bulldozer raked through rubble hours after the home was destroyed.
A police spokesman told AFP 18 family members and supporters were arrested for "violating a court order, violent fortification and disturbing public order," but no clashes took place during the eviction.
When police arrived to carry out the order on Monday, Salhiya family members went up to the building's roof with gas canisters, threatening to set the contents and themselves alight if they were forced out of their home.
Police had eventually backed off, but returned early Wednesday amid heavy rainfall in Jerusalem.
Salhiya family lawyer Walid Abu-Tayeh told AFP police had arrested 20 people during the operation, six of them Israeli citizens, with the latter being released, adding that "the Arab detainees were assaulted."
He also confirmed reports that the Palestinian father Mahmud Salhiya is married to an Israeli Jew, named Meital.
In an audio recording distributed to local Arab-language media, Meital, who speaks Arabic, said the family was woken early Wednesday by the sound of loud booms and police had cut the electricity.
"They took me out of the house with my daughter and children who were crying and arrested my husband and all the young men," she said.
- 'Two-time refugees' -
Deputy mayor Hassan-Nahoum said Tuesday the plot that the Salhiya family claim as theirs belonged to private Palestinian owners who then sold it to the city, which allocated it for classrooms for special needs Palestinian children.
A delegation of European diplomats visited the site during the standoff. "In occupied territory, evictions are a violation of international humanitarian law," the head of the European Union's mission to the Palestinian territories, Sven Kuehn von Burgsdorff, told AFP.
Human Rights Watch Israel and Palestine director Omar Shakir called the eviction "cruel" and stressed that the Salhiya family had previously been forced from their west Jerusalem home during Israel's creation in 1948.
Wednesday's eviction made them "two-time refugees", he said.
Hundreds of Palestinians face eviction from homes in Sheikh Jarrah and other east Jerusalem neighbourhoods. Circumstances surrounding the eviction threats vary.
In some cases, Jewish Israelis have lodged legal claims to plots they say were illegally taken during the war that accompanied Israel's creation in 1948.
Israeli law allows Jewish Israelis to file such claims, but no equivalent law exists for Palestinians who lost land during the conflict.
Palestinians facing eviction say their homes were legally purchased from Jordanian authorities who controlled east Jerusalem between 1948 and 1967.
Israel captured east Jerusalem in the Six-Day War of 1967 and later annexed it in a move not recognised by the international community.
More than 200,000 Jewish settlers have since moved into the city's eastern sector, fuelling tensions with Palestinians, who claim it as the capital of their future state.
mk-jjm/bs/kir
AFP
Israel gets away with whatever ethnic cleansing it can get away with until the resistance becomes too loud. They it delays and uses other methods towards the same end.
BY JONATHAN OFIR
MONDOWEISS
JANUARY 18, 2022
OMER BAR-LEV, ISRAEL’S MINISTER FOR PUBLIC SECURITY, VISITS A BORDER POLICE TRAINING FACILITY THAT INCLUDES A MOCKUP OF A PALESTINIAN URBAN NEIGHBORHOOD. FROM BAR-LEV VIDEO POSTED JANUARY 7, 2022. SCREENSHOT.
Yesterday’s much-publicized standoff in the east-Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah was yet another eviction attempt. Mahmoud Salhiya and members of his family stood on the roof with gas canisters, threatening to blow the place up if their forcible removal was carried out.
For now, the move has been temporarily averted. As the Jerusalem municipality said:
In coordination with the Israel Police, it was decided to postpone the eviction with the goal of allowing the Salahiya family to move out on their own.
Once again, the world was watching (although the international community once again seemed to be incapacitated, reduced to “bearing witness”). The British Consulate in East Jerusalem tweeted that Consul-General Diane Corner, whose office is located just opposite the Salhiya home, had joined other diplomats to “bear witness to the ongoing eviction”, as reported by Reuters. The consulate said that such evictions in occupied territory, in all but the most exceptional circumstances, were against international humanitarian law, and urged the Israeli government to “cease such practices which only serve to increase tensions on the ground”.
This follows a familiar pattern: Israel gets away with whatever ethnic cleansing it can get away with, until the resistance, international critique or condemnation become loud enough for it to delay and use other methods towards the same end.
But this eviction is actually different. While the many other evictions in Sheikh Jarrah are done by settler organizations which claim “Jewish ownership” of lands from before 1948 (a privilege which Palestinians are not afforded), this eviction is based on the pretext of the municipality having to build educational facilities at that location. The plot where the Salhiya house is located is being claimed by Israel as “absentee property” for public use.
As Oren Ziv and Yuval Abrahami report in +972 Magazine, there is are other public plots– but Jews get priority!
[T]here are alternative locations for the establishment of educational institutions in the neighborhood, which do not involve the eviction of Palestinian families. There is, for example, an empty lot on nearby Pierre Van Paassen Street, which is set out in the masterplan as being for public buildings. However, in an unusual move, the municipality decided to give up this land and hand it over, without compensation, to the ultra-Orthodox organization Ohr Somayach, which plans to establish a yeshiva and dormitories for students.
The gushing goodwill that is afforded Jewish settlers by the Jewish State is just not there for Palestinians.
That cynical policy was coupled by one of the most cynical tweets that could be imagined, by the Laborite Israeli Internal Security Minister Omer Bar-Lev. He said that Palestinians can’t both demand education and not expect to be dispossessed:
You can’t hold the stick at both ends by both demanding that the [Jerusalem] municipality take action on welfare for Arab residents and oppose the building of educational establishments for their welfare
For those who feel foreign to the idiom of the stick, it’s akin to saying “have their cake and eat it”. It’s not just misleading. It’s malicious.
Mahmoud Salhiya spoke truth from his rooftop:
They can build five schools here and my house will remain.
Salhiya shouts it from the rooftops, but Bar-Lev (which in Hebrew means “has a heart”) is not only deaf, but also heartless. Even though he’s a Laborite (and supposedly on the left side of Israeli politics). Well of course they can build five, ten and twenty schools without dispossessing Palestinians. But that was never really the point. The point is Judaization of Palestinian lands.
“This is a particularly cynical act by the municipality”, said Aviv Tatarsky, a researcher at the NGO Ir Amim (cited by +972). He continued:
The municipality is threatening to evacuate the Salhiyeh family, while at the same time giving up another plot of land and gifting it to a yeshiva. The municipality is succeeding in making even the obligation to provide education to the Palestinian population into part of the mechanism of dispossession and Judaization.
Haaretz journalist Nir Hasson says he cannot remember any other case in which a family was evicted for the purpose of building a school (thread here), though Israel has been dispossessing Palestinians for all kinds of pretexts. Recently, the standoffs in the Naqab (Negev) have been about Israel’s parastatal organ Jewish National Fund planting forests on Bedouin farmlands.
Now they are using schools as pretext for dispossession. And if you want to both have a home and a school, then tough luck, you should be so happy with just one of the two, because if you want both, you’re just trying to “hold the stick at both ends”, like the Laborite minister says.
Yesterday’s much-publicized standoff in the east-Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah was yet another eviction attempt. Mahmoud Salhiya and members of his family stood on the roof with gas canisters, threatening to blow the place up if their forcible removal was carried out.
For now, the move has been temporarily averted. As the Jerusalem municipality said:
In coordination with the Israel Police, it was decided to postpone the eviction with the goal of allowing the Salahiya family to move out on their own.
Once again, the world was watching (although the international community once again seemed to be incapacitated, reduced to “bearing witness”). The British Consulate in East Jerusalem tweeted that Consul-General Diane Corner, whose office is located just opposite the Salhiya home, had joined other diplomats to “bear witness to the ongoing eviction”, as reported by Reuters. The consulate said that such evictions in occupied territory, in all but the most exceptional circumstances, were against international humanitarian law, and urged the Israeli government to “cease such practices which only serve to increase tensions on the ground”.
This follows a familiar pattern: Israel gets away with whatever ethnic cleansing it can get away with, until the resistance, international critique or condemnation become loud enough for it to delay and use other methods towards the same end.
But this eviction is actually different. While the many other evictions in Sheikh Jarrah are done by settler organizations which claim “Jewish ownership” of lands from before 1948 (a privilege which Palestinians are not afforded), this eviction is based on the pretext of the municipality having to build educational facilities at that location. The plot where the Salhiya house is located is being claimed by Israel as “absentee property” for public use.
As Oren Ziv and Yuval Abrahami report in +972 Magazine, there is are other public plots– but Jews get priority!
[T]here are alternative locations for the establishment of educational institutions in the neighborhood, which do not involve the eviction of Palestinian families. There is, for example, an empty lot on nearby Pierre Van Paassen Street, which is set out in the masterplan as being for public buildings. However, in an unusual move, the municipality decided to give up this land and hand it over, without compensation, to the ultra-Orthodox organization Ohr Somayach, which plans to establish a yeshiva and dormitories for students.
The gushing goodwill that is afforded Jewish settlers by the Jewish State is just not there for Palestinians.
That cynical policy was coupled by one of the most cynical tweets that could be imagined, by the Laborite Israeli Internal Security Minister Omer Bar-Lev. He said that Palestinians can’t both demand education and not expect to be dispossessed:
You can’t hold the stick at both ends by both demanding that the [Jerusalem] municipality take action on welfare for Arab residents and oppose the building of educational establishments for their welfare
For those who feel foreign to the idiom of the stick, it’s akin to saying “have their cake and eat it”. It’s not just misleading. It’s malicious.
Mahmoud Salhiya spoke truth from his rooftop:
They can build five schools here and my house will remain.
Salhiya shouts it from the rooftops, but Bar-Lev (which in Hebrew means “has a heart”) is not only deaf, but also heartless. Even though he’s a Laborite (and supposedly on the left side of Israeli politics). Well of course they can build five, ten and twenty schools without dispossessing Palestinians. But that was never really the point. The point is Judaization of Palestinian lands.
“This is a particularly cynical act by the municipality”, said Aviv Tatarsky, a researcher at the NGO Ir Amim (cited by +972). He continued:
The municipality is threatening to evacuate the Salhiyeh family, while at the same time giving up another plot of land and gifting it to a yeshiva. The municipality is succeeding in making even the obligation to provide education to the Palestinian population into part of the mechanism of dispossession and Judaization.
Haaretz journalist Nir Hasson says he cannot remember any other case in which a family was evicted for the purpose of building a school (thread here), though Israel has been dispossessing Palestinians for all kinds of pretexts. Recently, the standoffs in the Naqab (Negev) have been about Israel’s parastatal organ Jewish National Fund planting forests on Bedouin farmlands.
Now they are using schools as pretext for dispossession. And if you want to both have a home and a school, then tough luck, you should be so happy with just one of the two, because if you want both, you’re just trying to “hold the stick at both ends”, like the Laborite minister says.
Israel condemned for eviction of Palestinian family in Sheikh Jarrah
January 18, 2022
A view of the demolition site in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in Jerusalem on 17 January 2022. [Mostafa Alkharouf - Anadolu Agency]
January 18, 2022
Israel has been condemned by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for the eviction of a Palestinian family in Sheikh Jarrah, Al Watan Voice has reported.
An official statement from the president's office described the attempted eviction of the Salehiyah family from their home in Sheikh Jarrah as "forced expulsion" which is a "flagrant violation" of international and humanitarian law. "As such, international intervention is needed urgently to protect the Palestinian people and to rein-in Israel and its criminal policies."
Israeli occupation forces placed a cordon around the house of Mahmoud Salehiyah in Sheikh Jarrah early on Monday morning. The family were told to leave so that the house could be demolished.
Salehiyah climbed onto the roof of the house and refused to move. After 10 hours, with the family still in their home, reported Safa, the Israeli forces withdrew from the area.
READ: Palestinian threatens to set himself on fire over Israeli eviction order
The Salehiyah family was originally expelled from their house in the West Jerusalem neighbourhood of Ein Karem in 1948 during the Zionist ethnic cleansing of the village. They bought a new house in the 1950s in Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, about a decade before Israel occupied and annexed — illegally — the area. Now, the Israeli-run Jerusalem Municipality is trying to expel them yet again.
The office of the PA president said that the Israeli escalation against Palestinian homes in occupied Jerusalem coincides with the state's policy to build a new settlement for "illegal Jewish settlers". It called for the US to put an end to the Israeli escalation; hailed resilience of the Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah; and thanked EU representatives and other diplomats who visited Sheikh Jarrah in solidarity with its residents.
January 18, 2022
A view of the demolition site in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in Jerusalem on 17 January 2022. [Mostafa Alkharouf - Anadolu Agency]
January 18, 2022
Israel has been condemned by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for the eviction of a Palestinian family in Sheikh Jarrah, Al Watan Voice has reported.
An official statement from the president's office described the attempted eviction of the Salehiyah family from their home in Sheikh Jarrah as "forced expulsion" which is a "flagrant violation" of international and humanitarian law. "As such, international intervention is needed urgently to protect the Palestinian people and to rein-in Israel and its criminal policies."
Israeli occupation forces placed a cordon around the house of Mahmoud Salehiyah in Sheikh Jarrah early on Monday morning. The family were told to leave so that the house could be demolished.
Salehiyah climbed onto the roof of the house and refused to move. After 10 hours, with the family still in their home, reported Safa, the Israeli forces withdrew from the area.
READ: Palestinian threatens to set himself on fire over Israeli eviction order
The Salehiyah family was originally expelled from their house in the West Jerusalem neighbourhood of Ein Karem in 1948 during the Zionist ethnic cleansing of the village. They bought a new house in the 1950s in Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, about a decade before Israel occupied and annexed — illegally — the area. Now, the Israeli-run Jerusalem Municipality is trying to expel them yet again.
The office of the PA president said that the Israeli escalation against Palestinian homes in occupied Jerusalem coincides with the state's policy to build a new settlement for "illegal Jewish settlers". It called for the US to put an end to the Israeli escalation; hailed resilience of the Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah; and thanked EU representatives and other diplomats who visited Sheikh Jarrah in solidarity with its residents.
Diplomats slam Israel over attempts to expel Palestinian family from Sheikh Jarra
The Salahia family is made up of seven adults and five children [Mucahit Aydemir/Anadolu Agency/Getty]
Diplomats and global institutions have slammed Israel over its continued attempts to expel Palestinians living in occupied East Jerusalem's Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood.
It comes as Israel on Tuesday released one 22-year-old Palestinian man who was detained on Monday amid Tel Aviv's efforts to take his family's home, under the pretext of "constructing a school".
The Palestinian man, identified as Abdullah Ikermawi, who belongs to the Salahia family, was conditioned to pay a 500 shekel ($160) fine and ordered to stay away from the house for three days, according to Palestine's official Wafa news agency.
"The occupation forces arrested my son Abdullah yesterday [Monday], just for filming the occupation security's siege of our Sheikh Jarrah house and their attack against us and attempt to remove us from our home," his mother, Amal Salahia, said.
Though the Salahia family, made up of seven adults and five children, have not yet been forced out of their house, Israel knocked down a plant nursery they own.
Palestinian family threaten to burn themselves if expelled
"The eviction, should it be completed, would leave five children with nowhere to live in the middle of a winter cold snap – this cannot be allowed to happen," Norwegian Refugee Council Palestine chief Caroline Ort noted on Monday.
Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff, the European Union's most-senior official in Jerusalem, and other diplomats looked on as Israel worked to try and force the Salahias out that day.
The EU's delegation to the Palestinian people tweeted: "Imperative to deescalate the situation and seek a peaceful resolution.
"Evictions/demolitions are illegal under international law and significantly undermine the prospects for peace as well as fuel tensions on the ground."
The UK's consul general in Jerusalem, Diane Corner, also "b[ore] witness" to what was happening, according to the consulate.
It added: "Evictions in Occupied Territory are against international humanitarian law in all but the most exceptional circumstances.
"The United Kingdom urges the Government of Israel to cease such practices which only serve to increase tensions on the group."
Neighbouring Jordan slammed Israel's actions, according to Wafa.
The foreign ministry said: "The evictions and displacement of Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem are a flagrant violation of international law and international humanitarian law.
"Israel, as the occupying power in East Jerusalem, is mandated by international law to protect Palestinians' rights to their homes."
It also argued demolitions, expulsions and other Israeli actions "undermine the changes of realising a just and comprehensive peace founded on the two-state solution".
The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation also hit out at Israel on Tuesday, situating what has happened as part of a wider effort at removing Palestinians and urging global actors to work to stop Israel's abuses in Jerusalem, Wafa said.
The EU's delegation to the Palestinian people tweeted that it's '[i]mperative to deescalate the situation and seek a peaceful solution'.
The New Arab Staff
18 January, 2022
18 January, 2022
The Salahia family is made up of seven adults and five children [Mucahit Aydemir/Anadolu Agency/Getty]
Diplomats and global institutions have slammed Israel over its continued attempts to expel Palestinians living in occupied East Jerusalem's Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood.
It comes as Israel on Tuesday released one 22-year-old Palestinian man who was detained on Monday amid Tel Aviv's efforts to take his family's home, under the pretext of "constructing a school".
The Palestinian man, identified as Abdullah Ikermawi, who belongs to the Salahia family, was conditioned to pay a 500 shekel ($160) fine and ordered to stay away from the house for three days, according to Palestine's official Wafa news agency.
"The occupation forces arrested my son Abdullah yesterday [Monday], just for filming the occupation security's siege of our Sheikh Jarrah house and their attack against us and attempt to remove us from our home," his mother, Amal Salahia, said.
Though the Salahia family, made up of seven adults and five children, have not yet been forced out of their house, Israel knocked down a plant nursery they own.
Palestinian family threaten to burn themselves if expelled
"The eviction, should it be completed, would leave five children with nowhere to live in the middle of a winter cold snap – this cannot be allowed to happen," Norwegian Refugee Council Palestine chief Caroline Ort noted on Monday.
Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff, the European Union's most-senior official in Jerusalem, and other diplomats looked on as Israel worked to try and force the Salahias out that day.
The EU's delegation to the Palestinian people tweeted: "Imperative to deescalate the situation and seek a peaceful resolution.
"Evictions/demolitions are illegal under international law and significantly undermine the prospects for peace as well as fuel tensions on the ground."
The UK's consul general in Jerusalem, Diane Corner, also "b[ore] witness" to what was happening, according to the consulate.
It added: "Evictions in Occupied Territory are against international humanitarian law in all but the most exceptional circumstances.
"The United Kingdom urges the Government of Israel to cease such practices which only serve to increase tensions on the group."
Neighbouring Jordan slammed Israel's actions, according to Wafa.
The foreign ministry said: "The evictions and displacement of Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem are a flagrant violation of international law and international humanitarian law.
"Israel, as the occupying power in East Jerusalem, is mandated by international law to protect Palestinians' rights to their homes."
It also argued demolitions, expulsions and other Israeli actions "undermine the changes of realising a just and comprehensive peace founded on the two-state solution".
The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation also hit out at Israel on Tuesday, situating what has happened as part of a wider effort at removing Palestinians and urging global actors to work to stop Israel's abuses in Jerusalem, Wafa said.
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