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Sheikh Jarrah

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Palestinian activists gather in front of an Israeli settler home during a demonstration against the evictions of Palestinian families in the Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, in East Jerusalem on April 16, 2021. (Photo: Jamal Awad/APA Images)

The Israeli Supreme Court deferred its decision on the forcible eviction of the four Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah on Monday, following months of protests and international pressure to stop the displacement of Palestinians from the East Jerusalem neighborhood. In the long-awaited court hearing on Monday, the court refused to rule on the status of ownership over the land, instead proposing that the Palestinians remain in their homes under the status of “protected residents.”

The Israeli government knows that if Jewish settlers succeed in evicting Palestinians in Jerusalem, the country could lose the Democratic Party. “You know what scares them most? The position of the Democratic members of Congress and the Democratic Party. They’re scared of the response. They’re very apprehensive of losing the younger generation, the Democratic Party and the Biden administration,” says Daniel Seidemann.

Israeli forces protect Israeli settlers outside a house in the Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in occupied East Jerusalem on April 16, 2021. (Photo: Jamal Awad/APA Images)

Within the Israeli colonization project, distinct legal frameworks are applied across a legally fragmented space and yet nevertheless share a common defining logic. The unifying logic of Jewishness as property, central to this system of settler-colonial domination, gives coherence to these legal fragments.

You can’t food-wash apartheid. Naming a Philadelphia food truck “Moshava” after a colonial tradition is appropriate considering that its supposed Israeli menu is predominantly Arab food, appropriated by Israel much the same as they’ve appropriated Palestinian lands, home, and heritage. There is nothing Israeli about shawarma, hummus, falafel, or arayes, all of which predate the state of Israel by a few dozen centuries.

Yale’s student body takes a strong stand for Palestine. As students at one of the most privileged academic institutions in the world, we must call out injustice wherever it may occur…. We stand against the violent expulsions of those living
under occupation in Sheikh Jarrah. We stand against the apartheid and the persecution of Palestinians, and stand for peace and the freedom of the Palestinian people from violent military occupation.”