Another tragic story of home foreclosures in the US? not really. But it is an american story, even if it happened 8,000 miles away.
Not many of us have lived in the same home for over 52 years, or even know of anyone that has.
Imagine what it would be like to be forced out of a home that has been part of your family for that long, with a government saying it belongs to others, that you are being evicted due to your ethnicity. Can't happen in the United States, not in a country that just elected an African American President? Perhaps not, at least probably not as brazen as something like this.
But it is happening with the support of your tax-dollars, and with the likely support or at least acquiescence of your congressperson/Senator.
More on the human cost of an apartheid system and the story of Mohammed al-Kurd of East Jerusalem.
The al-Kurds' house is part of a project that the Jordanian government built with the UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, to house 28 families who were forced to flee their original homes in 1948, after the Nakba, the forced expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland. Abu Kamel's family was forced to flee West Jerusalem during the ethnic cleansing, and settled in the house in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. All of the parties involved agreed then that ownership of the houses would be transferred to the families within three years.
There they lived in peace until shortly after the June War in 1967, when two groups of Jewish settlers claimed ownership of the land, despite the earlier, documented agreement between Jordan and UNRWA. The struggle that followed took both parties into the courts, then escalated dramatically in 2001. When Abu Kamel suffered a heart attack and his family left the house to take him to medical treatment elsewhere, one of the settler families took advantage of his ill health. They moved in and occupied an extension to the home that the al-Kurds had renovated for one of their sons. When they returned, the al-Kurds faced the agonizing choice of abandoning their longtime home or living side-by-side with the representatives of a group that was trying to force them out. Despite Abu Kamel's fragile health, they chose to stay and fight.
From Electronic Intifadah
Despite the presence of human rights observers from the International Solidarity Movement, despite the muted criticism of the US and Europe (see this story) the Israeli government was able to evict the elderly couple. So this family, already victims of the tragedy of 1948, was again made homeless. Not the first, not the last. It is as if the war of 1948 was still being waged.
The taking of home of Palestinians has long been the official policy of the Israeli government. According to Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions, some 18,000 Palestinian homes have been destroyed since the 1967 war. No end in sight. Whole villages are slated to become victims of the Cats, the Caterpillar bulldozers, the monsters that move without pity or conscience over the homes of the Palestinian people, who have lived in this land for hundreds and hundreds of years. Even when internationals do all they can to stand in the way of this injustice, the machinery of the State makes no detours. (Rest in Peace, Rachel Corrie and all the many Palestinians who have stood in the way). Today, a whole village called Al Aqabah is at risk of demolition. There are many more stories like this.
The question we are left with:
Will the new Obama administration and the new congress decide not to become Israel's policy defender in the United Nations and instead become a defender of international law and human rights?
Will they take steps to make sure that Israel no longer destroys the possibility of peace? Will they stand up to the whims of extremist and militaristic lobbies for war and occupation and instead chart a new course for US foreign policy?
It is too late for Mohammad al-Kurd, who died from heart failure shortly after his eviction. It is not too late for the people of Israel/Palestine and the people of the world to defeat this policy of ethnic cleansing and brutal apartheid system, and to create a new system where all can live in peace with justice. We need to stand with them.
Join this coalition to call for a new foreign policy that makes peace, rather than destroying homes.