AL-QUDS (Dispatches) – The Zionist regime’s so-called supreme court has postponed its ruling on an appeal to a lower court’s decision to allow four Palestinian families to be evicted from their homes in the East Al-Quds neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, saying it had not sufficiently heard arguments from both sides of the case.
During the hearing, which has been anticipated for months, the court suggested the families become “protected tenants” of Nahalat Shimon, the far-right settler organization awarded the land by a lower court.
However, the Palestinian families, together some 70 people, refused the offer.
“This means we’d have to concede ownership. This is something we definitively reject because the ownership is ours,” Alaa Salaymeh, one of the residents facing eviction, told Middle East Eye outside the courthouse after the court adjourned. “And we brought papers from Jordan that say the ownership is ours.”
Sami Ershied, a lawyer representing the Sheikh Jarrah families, told Al Jazeera that the proposal was unacceptable, but added it was “a good indication” that the judge did not reject their appeal out of hand.
The UN reasserts its rejection of the regime’s settlement activities amid the regime’s continued threat of expelling Palestinian families from the neighborhood.
Stephane Dujarric, the spokesman for the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, made the remarks in a press briefing on Monday.
The ruling was initially expected in May, but the prospect of the expulsions gave rise to raging protests throughout the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Al-Quds is located.
The rallies spilled over across the entire Palestinian territories, and prompted numerous world leaders to issue condemnatory statements addressed to the regime and urge it to exercise restraint.
The Zionist regime reportedly plans to ratify a hugely controversial and illegal construction project that will manipulate the holy occupied city of Al-Quds’ demography and the status of its borders.
Reporting on Tuesday, the Arab48 news website said the regime was to railroad the scheme that seeks to expand the Atarot settlements in the north of Al-Quds by a whopping 9,000 settler units.
Upon completion, the project will have divided the Palestinian communities, thus squeezing their numbers in the city in exchange for increasing the population of settlers.
The project features an industrial zone, commercial centers, hotels, water reservoirs, and other facilities.
The structures would be crowding the land that lies in the vicinity of the Al-Quds International Airport right up to the so-called “separation barrier,” thus supposedly enlarging the city’s contours in favor of the occupying regime.