Inserts:

00:01 Report by / Tania Kraemer
00:21 Kajed al Rajabi / Resident
01:29 Daniel Luria / Ateret Cohanim
02:14 Sarit Michaeli / B'Tselem
02:59 Kajed al Rajabi / Resident

Script:

00:00
Each time Kajed al Rajabi comes up here to his terrace, he knows it could be the last time. He’s been served with an eviction order for his home in Batan al Hawa, East Jerusalem near the Old City. Now, he says more than 30 members of his extended family will have nowhere to live.

00:18 
+++Kajed al Rajabi, Arabic+++
"All of us were born in this house. My father got married in this house. I can't imagine leaving ((my)) the house where I was born, played, grew up, and laughed ((in)). All my memories are in this house. /// We're afraid they'll come every minute, knock on the door, throw us out, and toss us into the street."

00:44
Batan al Hawa is a Palestinian neighborhood in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem. Israeli settlers have taken over houses here one by one. They move in as soon as a Palestinian family is evicted. More than 80 families are facing the prospect of losing their homes.

Daniel Luria from the settler group Ateret Cohanim says that they want to return a Jewish presence here. Some houses were sold, he says. The legal claim is based on land owned here by a Yemeni trust in the late 19th century. They were driven out in the 1930’s. Decades later Israeli courts have all ruled against the Palestinian families. 

01:27 
+++Daniel Luria, Ateret Cohanim (spokesperson/director ) English+++ 
"They're not being driven out, they are illegal squatters living in an old trust. And this Yemenite trust basically applied to the courts. And the courts correctly ruled that they were illegal squatters, nothing to do with Ateret Cohanim, nothing to do with us, we not involved with the committee or the court cases. We are involved in helping the trust rejuvenate the Jewish life."

01:50
The area in Silwan has become a hotspot for settler activities. It is close to what for Jewish people is the Temple Mount, and for Muslims the Haram al Sharif. Israeli human rights advocate Sarit Michaeli has followed the case for years. She says Israeli law works in the settlers’ favour.

02:14 
+++ Sarit Michaeli, B’Tselem, English++++ 
"The bottom line is that since the occupation of 1967, the occupation annexation of East Jerusalem, Israeli Jews who claim they lost property in the ‘48 War, of Jerusalem, in Jerusalem can reclaim it, can ask for it, and the government gives it to them. It doesn't matter that Palestinians, like the residents of this neighborhood, have lived in their homes totally legally. Some of them bought their homes and even got a mortgage."

02:48
Kajed al Rajabi hasn’t found another place to live. Affordable housing is rare in annexed East Jerusalem. Losing a home is a disaster.

02:58 
+++Kajed al Rajabi, Arabic+++ 
"We'll end up on the streets; we have no other place. This is our house, and here we have everything; outside we have nothing."

03:09
He has no more options left to appeal – the case has been ruled upon by the Supreme Court – against him. Now he can only wait to lose his home.

END