Early Wednesday morning, hundreds of police officers surrounded the Salhiya family home in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of East Jerusalem. They entered and arrested two dozen family members, expelled the rest, and proceeded to demolish the home. On a rainy night with near-freezing temperatures, the demolition left the Salhiya family homeless.
Israel’s Supreme Court has prohibited the Ministry of Interior from continuing to work according to the policies of the Citizenship and Entry Law. This law which expired last July, has been used since 2003 to ban family unification where one spouse is an Israeli citizen (in practice almost all of whom are Palestinian Citizens of Israel) and the other a Palestinian resident of the occupied territories.
A coalition of social change organizations, most of them from the NIF family, including NIF’s action arm, Shatil and grantee, Adalah — Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, have called on the Israeli government and the Jewish National Fund (JNF) to halt the “provocative and damaging” tree planting in the Negev.