Ramzi Mahmoud
05 May 2021•Update: 05 May 2021
GAZA, Palestine
The armed wing of the Palestinian resistance group Hamas warned Israel on Tuesday over its attacks on Palestinian residents in occupied East Jerusalem.
The Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades will not stand idly by in the face of attacks on the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, Mohammed Deif, the brigades' commander, who has been wanted by Israel for a long time, said in a written statement.
"They will pay a heavy price," he said, adding they are closely following developments.
He also congratulated the Palestinian people for standing firm in occupied Jerusalem.
On Monday, 10 Palestinians were injured in a brawl with Israeli police in East Jerusalem during a solidarity demonstration with the residents of Sheikh Jarrah, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.
The Israeli Central Court in East Jerusalem approved a decision to evict seven Palestinian families from their homes in favor of Israeli settlers as of the beginning of this year.
Since 1956, a total of 37 Palestinian families have been living in 27 homes in the neighborhood. However, illegal Jewish settlers have been trying to push them out on the basis of a law approved by the Israeli parliament in 1970.
The Palestinians say they established their homes in 1956 under an agreement with the Jordanian government and the UN refugee agency UNRWA.
However, Israeli settlement groups claim that Palestinian families built their homes on land owned by Jews before 1948 and that they must vacate these homes.
In the last few years, Palestinians evacuated three homes in the neighborhood after Israeli court decisions.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced in 1948 to flee their villages and towns in historical Palestine to neighboring countries including Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
Residents of another part of Palestine found themselves displaced to the Gaza Strip and West Bank amid rising attacks by Zionist gangs to pave the way for the creation of the state of Israel.
Palestinians use "Nakba" in Arabic, or "The Catastrophe,” to refer to the 1948 expulsions by Zionist gangs.
The Palestine-Israel conflict dates back to 1917, when the British government, in the now-famous Balfour Declaration, called for "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people."
