Israel Court Freezes Eviction Order of Salem Family in Sheikh Jarrah

Fatima Salem (C) looks on as Sven Kuehn von Burgsdorff, head of the European Union's mission to the West Bank and Gaza Strip (R), speaks to the media during his visit to her home in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, December 20, 2021 AHMAD GHARABLI AFP/File
Fatima Salem (C) looks on as Sven Kuehn von Burgsdorff, head of the European Union's mission to the West Bank and Gaza Strip (R), speaks to the media during his visit to her home in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, December 20, 2021 AHMAD GHARABLI AFP/File
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Israel Court Freezes Eviction Order of Salem Family in Sheikh Jarrah

Fatima Salem (C) looks on as Sven Kuehn von Burgsdorff, head of the European Union's mission to the West Bank and Gaza Strip (R), speaks to the media during his visit to her home in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, December 20, 2021 AHMAD GHARABLI AFP/File
Fatima Salem (C) looks on as Sven Kuehn von Burgsdorff, head of the European Union's mission to the West Bank and Gaza Strip (R), speaks to the media during his visit to her home in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, December 20, 2021 AHMAD GHARABLI AFP/File

An Israeli court on Tuesday froze the planned eviction of a Palestinian family in the flashpoint east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, pending an appeal.

The Salem family had been ordered to surrender the property to Jewish settlers who have claimed ownership of the plot.

Lawyer Majd Ghanayem, who filed the appeal in the family's name, said the eviction procedures would be suspended temporarily.

He explained that the family was forced to deposit a financial guarantee of about $8,000 in the court's fund, which will be fined if the appeal fails.

The court's decision states that Salem's family will be allowed to keep the property for another few months.

Last month, Israel's Enforcement and Collection Authority ordered the Salem family to evict their home in the neighborhood.

In November, the Palestinian family received their eviction order with a deadline to vacate by March 1.

Tensions have been mounting this month in Sheikh Jarrah. Settlers, police officers, border guards, and special forces increased their attacks against the residents of the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, including Salem's family.

The attacks resulted in property damage, multiple injuries, and arrests of Israeli and foreign activists.

Israeli officials admitted that this escalation aimed to deter the Palestinians from escalating their activities in Jerusalem and the West Bank, especially ahead of the upcoming Ramadan month.

The family of Fatima Salem has lived in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood for about 73 years and owns a house and a land lot next to it.

For several years, the family has suffered from the settlers' continuous attacks.

The family has a statement from the Jordanian authorities, which have been responsible for Jerusalem since 1948. But, in 1988, a court issued an eviction order, which it later froze.

In 2012, settlers re-opened the case to implement the court's decision under the Statute of Civil Limitation, which allows for the execution of the sentence up to 25 years from the date of its issuance. Three years later, the eviction was renewed again, which affected Fatima's husband who suffered a stroke, stayed in the hospital for six months, and died.

In the 2015 eviction order, the occupation authorities gave the Salem's until December 29, 2021, to vacate the house, but the date was postponed indefinitely after the family's attorney submitted a lawsuit to Israel's Enforcement and Collection Authority.

In the past years, Israeli groups intensified their attempts to seize as many homes as possible in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, and several settlers succeeded in taking Palestinians' properties.

Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood has gained international fame since the end of 2021, with global activists calling Israeli authorities to stop the displacement of Palestinian families from the homes they have resided in for decades.

US President Joe Biden's administration asked the Israeli government on February 16 to take steps to avoid further escalation in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, Israeli and US officials told Axios website.



Israel’s Military Admits to Shooting at Ambulances in Gaza

 Palestinians buy clothes in a shop next to a destroyed apartment building in preparation for Eid al-Fitr celebrations at Al-Rimal neighborhood in the center of Gaza City Friday March 28, 2025.(AP)
Palestinians buy clothes in a shop next to a destroyed apartment building in preparation for Eid al-Fitr celebrations at Al-Rimal neighborhood in the center of Gaza City Friday March 28, 2025.(AP)
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Israel’s Military Admits to Shooting at Ambulances in Gaza

 Palestinians buy clothes in a shop next to a destroyed apartment building in preparation for Eid al-Fitr celebrations at Al-Rimal neighborhood in the center of Gaza City Friday March 28, 2025.(AP)
Palestinians buy clothes in a shop next to a destroyed apartment building in preparation for Eid al-Fitr celebrations at Al-Rimal neighborhood in the center of Gaza City Friday March 28, 2025.(AP)

Israel’s military admitted Saturday it had fired on ambulances in the Gaza Strip after identifying them as “suspicious vehicles,” with Hamas condemning it as a “war crime” that killed at least one person.

The incident took place last Sunday in the Tal al-Sultan neighborhood in the southern city of Rafah, close to the Egyptian border.

Israeli troops launched an offensive there on March 20, two days after the army resumed aerial bombardments of Gaza following an almost two-month-long truce.

Israeli troops had “opened fire toward Hamas vehicles and eliminated several Hamas terrorists,” the military said in a statement to AFP.

“A few minutes afterward, additional vehicles advanced suspiciously toward the troops... The troops responded by firing toward the suspicious vehicles, eliminating a number of Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists.”

The military did not say if there was fire coming from the vehicles.

It added that “after an initial inquiry, it was determined that some of the suspicious vehicles... were ambulances and fire trucks,” and condemned “the repeated use” by “terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip of ambulances for terrorist purposes.”

The day after the incident, Gaza’s Civil Defense agency said in a statement that it had not heard from a team of six rescuers from Tal al-Sultan who had been urgently dispatched to respond to deaths and injuries.

On Friday, it reported finding the body of the team leader and the rescue vehicles—an ambulance and a firefighting vehicle—and said a vehicle from the Palestine Red Crescent Society was also “reduced to a pile of scrap metal.”

Basem Naim, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, accused Israel of carrying out “a deliberate and brutal massacre against Civil Defense and Palestinian Red Crescent teams in the city of Rafah.”

“The targeted killing of rescue workers—who are protected under international humanitarian law—constitutes a flagrant violation of the Geneva Conventions and a war crime,” he said.

Tom Fletcher, head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said that since March 18, “Israeli airstrikes in densely populated areas have killed hundreds of children and other civilians.”

“Patients killed in their hospital beds. Ambulances shot at. First responders killed,” he said in a statement.

“If the basic principles of humanitarian law still count, the international community must act while it can to uphold them.”