WASHINGTON — "The eviction of the Palestinians from their houses is a joyous sight," Knesset Member Benny Elon told journalists last week, as he stood on a hill in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.
Four years ago groups of Jews began illegal settlements in the Sheikh Jarrah area.
Last week, following a decision of the Israeli Supreme Court, Israeli police evicted 20 Palestinian families from their homes.
"Yes, this is a transfer," said Elon. "If Hitler had transferred six million Jews, Israel would look different today. This will be a model Jewish neighborhood for more than 100 families."
Israeli religious extremists, who carried out the fight to push the Palestinians out of the neighborhood, are urging remaining Palestinians to leave voluntarily.
In the meantime, the evicted families are forced to live on the street.
"I was born in this house in 1952, and today they tell me that this is not my home," Abd El-Fatah told Israeli newspapers. "Here, outside, we cook, we sleep on the sidewalk, and we shower at the homes of neighbors," said his wife, Miriam.
Elon announced the eviction of Palestinians in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood is part of a plan "for the construction of seventeen Jewish outposts to encircle the Old City of Jerusalem, [Arab East Jerusalem]. Our goal is to make it impossible to divide the Old City as part of any future diplomatic agreement."
In another settlement at Hebron, the settler’s spokesman David Wilder recently showed a group of visiting Americans a new Jewish neighborhood under construction in Hebron’s wholesale market.
The guests visited the five apartments that were built behind the storefronts of shops that were abandoned by their Palestinians owners "after a long confrontation with the Jewish settlers." New walls were erected, kitchens were installed, and bathrooms were built. Wilder said there is a plan for conquering wider sections of the market the Palestinians were forced to abandon.
In addition, settlers in Hebron are about to complete another initiative to expand their "conclave" by forcing Palestinian cave dwellers in the Hebron area to be evacuated.
