THE ISRAELI POLICE CONTINUE THEIR SUPPRESSION OF THE STRUGGLE IN SHEIKH JARRAH.
THE POLICE ARE STRIKING A BLOW AGAINST DEMOCRACY AND THE FREEDOM OF SPEECH IN ISRAEL.
On Sunday, February 28, 2010 a petition was filed at the Israeli High Court of Justice against the Israeli Police, because of its refusal to permit a protest rally in the compound of the evicted Palestinian families in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of occupied East Jerusalem. Former Members of the Israeli Knesset Yossi Sarid and Avraham Burg were amongst those who joined the petition which was prepared by the Palestinian residents and Israeli activists who take part in the struggle.
The Israeli Police are continuing their harassment of the non-violent struggle of Jerusalem residents against the expulsion of Palestinian families from their homes in order to enable Jewish settler groups to take over East Jerusalem.
On Saturday March 6, 2010 a mass protest rally against the expulsion of the families from the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood will be held under the slogan: “We Will Not be Stopped – Stopping the Settlements in East Jerusalem” .
activists Avner, Elisheva and Asaf present the petition at the Supreme Court
The rally, in which musicians and public figures will participate, is part of a public campaign which has taken place during the past number of months.
Despite the fact that the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court has ruled a number of times that the demonstrations were orderly and lawful, the Israeli Police refuse to allow the rally to take place in the compound from which the families were expelled and is forcing the demonstrators to hold the rally at some distance from the compound. The petitioners request that the rally be held in the compound from which the families were expelled and argue that the distancing of the rally from the relevant venue comprises a blow to freedom of speech and the right to carry out non-violent protest, especially in light of the fact that the settlers’ groups and their supporters hold public events in the compound every week. The petition points out that the football field to which the police wish to distance the rally is hidden from public view and is too small to contain the amount of people who are expected to participate, and as such could cause the protest to spill over into the main road, thus disrupting traffic.
The struggle, which began in August 2009 in reaction to an additional wave of evictions in the neighbourhood, is organized by a group of young Jerusalemite activists along with the Palestinian neighbourhood committee. The young activists have been joined at the weekly protests every Friday by academics and public figures such as the author David Grossman. As this struggle is organized by independent activists and not by an established organization, we the activists are representing ourselves before the court. The former Members of the Knesset, Yossi Sarid, Avraham Burg and Mossi Raz, who support the struggle and take part in the weekly protests, have also joined their names to the petition.
“We activists are protesting the blatant discrimination of the police who refuse to allow the existence of non-violent protest without any legal justification, while at the same time that they allow a group of settlers to enter the neighbourhood without any restrictions, despite the increase in the use of violence by the settlers against the Palestinian residents in the neighbourhood. We vow to continue our struggle, using all the legal means available to us, in order to stop the settlers’ organizations from taking over the neighbourhood”.
The refusal of the Israeli Police to grant a permit for the venue requested for the rally is another link in the chain of continuing political suppression and causes grave harm to the right of freedom of speech that the court have pronounced so many times as the cornerstone of democracy.
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