A “welcoming” committee of Arabs and foreign anti-Israel activists, including those from the United States and Sweden, attacked Jews with clubs and stones Tuesday as a new family moved into a home in eastern Jerusalem. Police stopped the attack but not before blood was streaming down the face of a Jewish guard at the site.
The clash came as Sweden plans to present a proposal to the European Union that it recognize eastern Jerusalem as the capital of the Palestinian Authority, a step that would give the PA de facto status as a state and weaken Israeli sovereignty over the city.
A recent court decision backed Jewish ownership of the home next to the Shimon HaTzadik neighborhood in the Sheikh Jarrah section of the capital, where hundreds of Jews were forced to flee their homes during the British Mandate and in the 1948 War of Independence. The Sephardic Community Committee and the Knesset Yisrael Association bought the land in the area more than 100 years ago.
The multi-dwelling house that was returned to Jews on Tuesday is located close to where another Jewish family moved in a month ago after Arab squatters, who had refused to obey a court order to vacate the property, were forcibly removed by Jerusalem police. Arabs had built the structure without a legal permit on the Jewish-owned land and had refused a court compromise that they remain in the homes and pay rent to the owners.
Jew wounded by Arabs and leftists Tuesday (Flash 90)
Following Tuesday’s addition of another Jew in the neighborhood, the United Nations issued a statement that the “secretary general has expressed his dismay at the continuation of demolitions, evictions and the installment of Israeli settlers in Palestinian neighborhoods in ‘occupied East Jerusalem.’”