Jewish nationalists and Palestinians clashed in an East Jerusalem neighborhood on Tuesday after the Israelis took over a house by court order in a predominantly Arab area. The confrontation further strained tensions in this contested city, where competing Israeli and Palestinian claims have become a sticking point in the Obama administration’s efforts to restart peace talks.
The house at the center of Tuesday’s flare-up is in Sheik Jarrah, a district just north of the Old City, where three Palestinian families have been evicted from other houses in the last year after losing a lengthy legal battle in the High Court and lower district and magistrates courts.
A Jewish association won its claim to historical ownership of the land in question, and has plans to build a large Jewish housing complex there. The Palestinians fear that the Jewish presence in Sheik Jarrah is part of a larger project to cement Israeli control of the eastern part of the city and to push Palestinian residents out.
The latest Jewish residents to move into the area were escorted by the police and private security guards and immediately removed furniture from the property, which was built by a Palestinian family headed by Refka al-Kurd, 87.
The small, one-story structure was built about 10 years ago as an extension of the Kurds’ original home, but it was unoccupied, having been sealed by the authorities after it was determined to have been constructed without the proper permits.
“The authorities took our keys to the property because we built it without permits,” said Nabil al-Kurd, 66, who lives in the original house. “But it seems the settlers can live here without permits because they are the sons of God,” he said bitterly, referring to the Jewish newcomers.
Shmulik Ben-Ruby, the spokesman for the Jerusalem police, said his force acted in line with the court decision that determined that the property “is owned by Jews.”
Blood spattered the forecourt on Tuesday after a Jewish man was hit on the head by Palestinians who attacked the new residents with clubs and stones. Later, after a day of scuffles, a Palestinian woman, Nadia al-Kurd, was taken to the hospital with what was thought to be a heart attack.
The United Nations said in a statement on Tuesday that the “secretary general has expressed his dismay at the continuation of demolitions, evictions and the installment of Israeli settlers in Palestinian neighborhoods in occupied East Jerusalem.”
“Provocative actions such as these,” it continued, “create inevitable tensions, undermine trust, often have tragic human consequences and make resuming negotiations and achieving a two-state solution more difficult.”
Israel claims sovereignty over all of Jerusalem, including the eastern part that it annexed after conquering it from Jordan in the 1967 war. The Palestinians demand the eastern section as the capital of a future state.
Last week, after a Jerusalem planning committee approved the expansion of a Jewish district in another part of the annexed territory, the White House said it objected to that and other Israeli practices in Jerusalem related to housing, including “the continuing pattern of evictions and demolitions of Palestinian homes.”
“At a time when we are working to relaunch negotiations,” the White House added, “these actions make it more difficult for our efforts to succeed.”
The Kurds’ home is adjacent to a site held by Jews to be the ancient tomb of Shimon Hatzadik, or Simeon the Just, a Jewish high priest from the days of the Second Temple. A Jewish organization reclaimed the land around the tomb based on property deeds that date from the 1870s. The Palestinians say the deeds were forged.
The Palestinians’ homes were built in the 1950s by a United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees when the area was under Jordanian control. The families say that Jordan gave them ownership of the houses but that the homes were never formally registered in their names.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, condemned what it said was a Swedish initiative to sharpen the European Union’s position on Jerusalem and to have it recognize Palestinian claims to East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state.
“This will not help promote the peace process,” said Yigal Palmor, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, of the initiative that was first reported in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on Tuesday. “It will only marginalize the European role in it.”
Sweden is coming to the end of its six-month presidency of the European Union. The group’s foreign ministers will decide whether to adopt the new position at a meeting next week.
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