Palestinian family in East Jerusalem told to make way for Jewish settlers

The Guardian - A Palestinian family in East Jerusalem have been ordered to evacuate a room in their home so Jewish settlers can move in, following an 11-year court battle waged by a pro-settler US millionaire.

Ahmed Hamdallah, 33, has been told to remove his furniture and possessions by Monday or he will be billed for the cost of bailiffs clearing a room occupied by himself, his wife and one-year-old son. New occupants will take over the property under the protection of armed guards, he has been told.

The Hamdallah family have lived in the home in Ras al-Amud since 1952. The extension, in which Ahmed, Amani and Yazan Hamdallah now live, was built in the mid-1980s.

However, the land on which the home is built was bought in 1990 by Irving Moskowitz, a Florida businessman, from its pre-1948 Jewish owners. Moskowitz has spent millions of dollars purchasing property in East Jerusalem to create pockets of hardline Jewish settlements in Palestinian neighbourhoods.

Hamdallah said he intended to destroy the extension, which has views of the Dome of the Rock and the Mount of Olives, rather than hand it over to settlers. "Do you think I will just give them the key? I'm not going to allow them to live in my house," he told the Guardian. "I have no power to do anything. I don't even have the strength to speak or eat or go to work."

Amani, his wife, said: "We have no plan, nowhere else to go." She said the main part of the house was already crowded with members of the extended family...
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