Head of Hamas’s political bureau Ismail Haniyeh says all the Palestinian resistance factions firmly support the families of the East al-Quds neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in the face of the Israeli regime’s threat to forcefully evict them from their homes.
“I say to our people in Sheikh Jarrah: The resistance with all its factions and the nation are standing behind the steadfast citizens who are defending Jerusalem (al-Quds), the al-Aqsa Mosque and our holy sites,” the Palestinian Information Center quoted Haniyeh as saying.
The top Hamas leader hailed the Sheikh Jarrah families for refusing to accept an Israeli court’s offer that would make them tenants of their own homes and for sticking to their land and rights and for showing a high level of responsibility and awareness.
Palestinian families facing the threat of forced eviction from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood on Tuesday rejected an Israeli court’s so-called conflict resolution proposal that would enable Israeli settlers to eventually confiscate their land in 15 years.
The four families were required by Israel’s supreme court to respond to the proposal, put forward in August, under which they would be offered “protected tenancy status” for a 15-year period in return for accepting that their land belongs to the Israeli Nahlat Shimon settler organization.
Haniyeh further said the Palestinian families in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood had been lately under a lot of pressure to accept the unjust compromise that would strip them of their own homes’ ownership.
Local sources reported that the Israeli police on Tuesday quelled a group of activists who rallied in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood to express their solidarity with its residents and forced the activists to leave the area.
In a statement on Tuesday, Haron Nasser al-Din, a member of the political bureau of Hamas, said the issue of Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood cannot be compromised, warning Israel that it will pay the price for its “crimes” in the occupied city of al-Quds.
The official stressed the Hamas movement’s rejection of “any form of compromise on the homes threatened with seizure in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood,” noting that the Israeli judiciary is part of the Israeli occupying regime’s security system that facilitates the seizure of the lands and homes of al-Quds by settlers.
The Israeli regime’s plans to force a number of Palestinian families out of their homes at the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East al-Quds and Israeli violent raids on worshippers at al-Aqsa Mosque prompted Palestinian retaliation that was followed by a brutal Israeli bombing campaign against the besieged Gaza Strip on May 10.
About 260 Palestinians were killed in the Israeli offensive.
In response, Palestinian resistance movements, chief among them Hamas, launched Operation al-Quds Sword and fired more than 4,000 rockets and missiles into the occupied territories, killing 12 Israelis.
Apparently caught off guard by the unprecedented barrage of rockets from Gaza, Israel announced a unilateral ceasefire on May 21, which Palestinian resistance movements accepted with Egyptian mediation.