Court orders settlers to leave building in East Jerusalem

[Englander]

By Meron Rapoport, Haaretz Correspondent

The Ateret Cohanim association must give up one its major strongholds in East Jerusalem, after a court ordered it to seal up a seven-story building it erected in Kfar Silwan and evict its Jewish residents. This is the first time settlers will be forced to evacuate a building in East Jerusalem since the association began its settlement activities there after the 1967 Six-Day War.

Judge Eliahu Zimra, of the Jerusalem Court of Municipal Affairs, ruled that the eight families living in the building must leave within two months from today, after which all the building's openings must be sealed with concrete blocks. Each defendant was also ordered to pay a fine of NIS 3,500. If the building is not sealed by April 15, the district planning committee will carry out the task and charge the families for the work. The Supreme Court rejected the families' request for an extension of the deadline.

Palestinian residents of Silwan expressed great satisfaction with the ruling, which is likely to deal a hard blow to the settlers' effort to expand their foothold in the eastern part of the city.

The original idea was for Jewish families to live in the area, in which Jews from Yemen had lived until the 1930s. No construction permit was ever issued for the building. The Jewish families moved in, under police guard, in April 2004, after the Palestinian family that had been living there was evicted. The eight Jewish families turned the building into one of the largest concentrations of Jews in East Jerusalem. Each family paid $250 per month to the Committee for the Renewal of Jewish Settlement in Silwan, which is associated with Ateret Cohanim.

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Municipal legal adviser Yossi Havilio attempted to force the families to leave and ordered water and electricity supplies to the building be disconnected, but his directives were not carried out. He also asked the Housing Ministry to stop funding its 24-hour guarding of the building, on the grounds that it amounted to facilitating violation of the law, but the ministry has continued to pay for the security detail.

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