The state of Israel is sometimes very difficult to defend in how they treat Palestinians. This is another example of the arrogance of the Israeli state.
Israeli police evicted a disabled Palestinian man and his wife from their Jerusalem home of more than 50 years.
The eviction followed a court order in July that found that the eastern Jerusalem home, provided to the couple in 1956 by the Jordanian government and a U.N. refugee agency, was built on land they did not own. A Jewish group said it has Ottoman-era documents proving the land originally was owned by Jews who fled in 1948 when Jordanian troops overran eastern Jerusalem, according to The Associated Press.
The wheelchair-bound Palestinian man, Mohammed al-Kurd, and his wife, Fawzieh, were removed from the building before dawn Sunday. The eviction came despite a plea by the U.S. consulate to keep the couple in their home.
The United States usually turns a blind eye to the Israeli state, but this time they actually tried to intervene on behalf of the evicted Palestinian's.
The eviction, which took place before dawn on Sunday, comes after years of litigation that culminated in an Israeli supreme court ruling in July ordering the couple out of the house.
Several governments, including the United States and Britain, whose consulate is a few hundred yards from the house in east Jerusalem, had tried to intervene on behalf of Mohammad and Fawzieh al-Kurd but without success. Most of the international community has not recognised Israeli sovereignty over east Jerusalem, which was captured in the 1967 war and annexed.
Palestinians have long argued that evictions and demolitions are an attempt by Israel to reduce the number of Palestinians in east Jerusalem to allow settlement expansion and to pre-judge a final status peace agreement.
Daniel Seidemann an Israeli human rights lawyer said "This is part of the areas targeted by the settler organisations to surround the old city of Jerusalem... There is a legal case that was decided on the al-Kurd family. This does have political ramifications in that there is a concerted effort to take these targeted areas and reduce the Palestinian presence. Clearly, the al-Kurd family has been a victim."
The story of the al-Kurd house is long and disputed and involves complicated legal and political battles. Mohammad al-Kurd and his parents were one of several families of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war who were housed in the Sheikh Jarrah district in 1956, a time when it was under Jordanian control.
His family came from Jaffa, near Tel Aviv, and his wife's family was from Talbeyieh in west Jerusalem. Under an agreement with the UN agency for Palestinian refugees the families gave up their food ration cards and were given the properties under 33-year leases, which would revert to full ownership as long as they paid a token rent and kept the properties in good order.
It appears, however, that the land was previously owned in the late 19th century by Jews - it is close to an old Jewish tomb long popular with pilgrims. In 1967, when Israel captured east Jerusalem, the property was taken by the custodian for absentee property, an Israeli institution that had also taken control of all property left behind by the 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were forced out in the 1948 war.
I know the issue of Israel and Palestine is an emotional and raw issue. In our media landscape it is easy to be critical of Palestinian extremists, but criticism also needs to extend to the extremism of the Israeli state.
It is not only the state of Israel that is a problem but also right-wing Jewish settlers.
Jewish settlers on Saturday beat up a six-year-old Palestinian boy near the West Bank town of Hebron, and he was taken to hospital suffering from moderate head wounds, medics said.
Bilal Daana was attacked by a group of settlers near the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba near Hebron. They beat him up and threw stones at him, the Palestinian medics said.
The boy was taken by Israeli soldiers to a checkpoint at the entrance to Hebron from where he was transferred to the local Al-Ahli hospital.
The incident was the latest in a surge of settler attacks on Palestinians, peace activists and Israeli soldiers since the authorities dismantled a settlement outpost near Hebron last month.