RAMALLAH: Israeli authorities deported 45 Palestinians from the western part of East Jerusalem’s neighborhood of Beit Hanina to the eastern one, which locates behind the separation wall.
Sources close to Al-Radaydeh family told the official Palestinian news agency (WAFA) that the family members were deported from Nusseibeh area in Beit Hanina, which is under Israeli jurisdiction, to the one currently in the West Bank.
The wall that Israel built in Palestinian territories divided Beit Hanina into two parts: the western part that Israel wants to be in its eternal capital and the eastern one that it wants to transfer to the Palestinian Authority in a final peace agreement.
The sources said that the deportation included the parents of “martyr” Mar’i Al-Radaydeh, his brothers, their children and other relatives.
Al-Radaydeh was shot dead last March by Israel police in West Jerusalem after he overturned a police car and rammed into a bus with his tractor.
According to the report, the 45 Palestinians have lost their right of residence in Jerusalem, where they resided for decades. The Commission of Jerusalem Deportees said that the Israel move came to “make demographic balance in the city.”
About 250,000 Palestinians live in East Jerusalem, which Israel seized in the June 1967 War and later annexed. Israel in February ordered hundreds of Palestinians to leave their homes in East Jerusalem, warning that 90 houses would be destroyed because they are illegal.
Palestinian officials say the demolitions, if they go ahead, would deprive more than 1,000 people of their homes and mark the largest destruction of Palestinian property in East Jerusalem since 1967.
Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot said that the American administration sent a letter to Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat protesting the municipality’s plans to demolish dozens of houses in the Silwan neighborhood.
Yediot quoted an Arab source as saying that the letter came in response to an earlier letter sent by Barkat to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, replying to her criticism of the demolition plan.
