•  Team: 2 coordinators
•  Objective: Enforcing Housing Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory
•  Funding: Belgian Ministry of Cooperation and Development


ASF is currently supporting a housing rights project in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

The “Enforcing Housing Rights” project is a four-month project and includes an international legal expert mission at the end of December 2010. The fact-finding mission and subsequent report will focus on the legal battle that is currently taking place in Sheikh Jarrah, a Palestinian neighbourhood in occupied East Jerusalem. Additionally, the work of the project will also consider the broader picture of housing rights for Palestinians in East Jerusalem and Area C of the West Bank, the surrounding planning regime and the legal protection and enforcement mechanisms.

Sheikh Jarrah is a Palestinian residential neighbourhood located to the North of the Old City in occupied East Jerusalem. In recent years Israeli settler groups have made persistent efforts to take over land and property in the neighbourhood, which is home to around 2,800 Palestinians, in order to establish new settlements there. As a result, over 60 Palestinians have lost their homes and another 500 remain at risk of forced eviction, dispossession and displacement in the near future (source: UN-OCHA).

The Sheikh Jarrah eviction cases are primarily based upon two competing land ownership claims, namely those of (1) Jewish Committees who claim ownership pre-dating 1948; and (2) 28 extended Palestinian refugee families (over 500 people) who have been residing on the land for over 60 years. The 28 Palestinian families, all of which fled or were expelled from their homes in 1948 from areas that are now in Israel were resettled in the area of Sheikh Jarrah by the United Nations in 1956. Under this UNRWA sponsored housing scheme, the 28 Palestinian refugee families were granted funds to build homes on land provided by the Jordanian government, provided they relinquished their right to food assistance by UNRWA. According to the agreement, the families were to pay a nominal rent for 3 years, after which ownership of the land and the properties would be transferred to them. However, legal title to the homes was never formally transferred to the families.

Since the start of the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967, which continues until today, the Palestinian refugee families in Sheikh Jarrah have been the target of eviction proceedings brought by the Jewish Committees before Israeli Courts, resulting in the eviction of 4 refugee families to date (60 people), and their renewed displacement.

The ASF housing rights project and fact-finding mission will consider the legal battle that is currently taking place in Sheikh Jarrah within the framework of international humanitarian law and human rights law, as it is part of the organization’s program in Israel and the Palestinian Territory aimed at promoting respect for and enforcement of international law through the strengthening of the capacities of Human Rights lawyers and CSOs and the provision of technical support to their work.

For the latest information:

"East Jerusalem is not downtown Tel Aviv"

Housing rights of Palestinians in East Jerusalem are not being respected