After years of courts and Jerusalem municipality orders and threats to the Salhia family to vacate their home in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood to the north of the Old City, the occupation forces and municipality staff stormed the place in the early hours of January 19th (19-1-2022) and immediately proceeded to evict The family. The Occupation forces violently assaulted them, including a 9-year-old girl, and arrested them. Then, using bulldozers, they demolished the family’s house, a nursery erected next to it, as well as a car park belonging to the family. In addition to this, the municipality’s crews bulldozed the 6-dunam area and cleaned it of the rubble of the house and the facilities built around it. To eradication and cover-up of the crime completely. The occupation justifies its crime by saying that the plot of land is within the plan to establish a school serving the people of Sheikh Jarrah, which will be located on the ruins of the Salhiya family home in the place.

Regarding the crime that occurred, Mahmoud Salhia expressed over the phone the suffering and pain that befell the family, both financially and psychologically. On the one hand, the police arrested all family members and prevented them from returning to the place. In addition to this, the police assaulted the females and expelled them. The family will be not allowed to return in Jerusalem for a month after their release. Mr. Hammoud Salhia said that the occupation “erased my history, my memory and the dream of my life, and deprived me of even the photos and documents that I owned, not only in my house in Sheikh Jarrah, but also in the village of Ain Karem from which the family was expelled. My house is in Sheikh Jarrah, in addition to the house, the occupation destroyed the nursery from which I earned my livelihood and which cost me a lot of money to build). Regarding the family’s current location, Mahmoud Salihiya said that a benefactor from Beit Hanina gave him the keys to the house, and he and his family live in it now.

The family was deeply affected, especially the females. One of Mahmoud Salhia's daughters urinates on herself from fear, and another was targeted with a sound bomb, and Amal Al-Akramawi was pushed hard, and all the females were arrested.

It is noteworthy that courts and lawyers had cost the Salhiya family a large sums of money in order to install the building and obtain licenses, but the municipality has disregarded all these attempts, and the response was clear by removing everything related to the family in this place.

The house of Mahmoud Salhia and his sister Amal Akramawi is located in Sheikh Jarrah, near the Isaf Al-Nashashibi House for Culture, Arts and Literature, and the British Consulate. It has an area of about 220 square meters and includes 15 members of the two families.

Demolition of Salihiya Family house and facilities - Shaikh Jarrah 

On the other hand, it is worth mentioning that the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood is located 1 km to the north of the walls of the old city of Jerusalem, and contains old houses belonging to the Jerusalemite families, as well as new houses. A number of homes have been demolished and their people displaced, and many other homes have been seized, and there are many families in the neighborhood living under conditions of threat today of dispersal and the loss of their history in the place.

About Ash-Shaikh Jarrah:

2 km north the walls of the old Jerusalem city , Ash-Shaikh Jarrah neighborhood currently contains 70 families , origin back to 28 Palestinian families forcedly displaced from their cities and villages During the 1948 war. Today, the 28 families became 550 people living in 28 buildings (divided into 63 small residential units).

Protecting marginalized communities in Jerusalem through legal support and advocacy

This report was prepared with EU funding, the contents of this document do not reflect positions of the European Union