After a standoff that captured global attention, Israel forcibly displaced the Salhiya family from their home and demolished it in the middle of the night on Wednesday, in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. 

Israel postponed its eviction of the Salhiya family in Sheikh Jarrah to make way for a Palestinian school after international outrage apparently caught the government by surprise. But it’s a familiar pattern. Israel gets away with whatever ethnic cleansing it can get away with, until the resistance, international critique, or condemnation become loud enough for it to delay and use other methods towards the same end.

Members of the Salhiya family in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah faced off against Israeli police on Monday morning, as Israeli forces attempted to forcibly remove them from their home. A number of the young men in the family barricaded themselves on the roof of the home in an effort to stop the removal, and several news outlets quoted Mahmoud Salhiya as saying that he would set himself on fire and blow the house with the gas tank if the eviction was carried out.