AFP/GETTY A Palestinian schoolgirl stands by Israeli security forces outside a Palestinian house in Sheikh Jarrah, East JerusalemSettlement by stealth belies promises of restraint
Hillary Clinton has praised Israel for its policy on settlers but, the displacements go on
Maysaa Al-Kurd has lived all her life in the home her family moved into in 1956. The pomegranate tree standing in the garden was planted by her father when she was still an infant nearly half a century ago. But that hardly reassured her yesterday when she heard the Jewish settlers break into the next-door extension building her brother Nabil built to house his family in 2001.
"I heard the door opened by force," she said. "And then I heard one of them say: 'This furniture belongs to whom?'" Later she saw "with my own eyes" a settler breaking a television set. Outside, a refrigerator, cushions and household furniture, apparently removed by the intruders, stood for several hours in the pouring rain. Inside, broken glass could be seen above a stove.
What Ms Kurd, of the inner-city East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah, was hearing at about 10.30am yesterday was the latest in an accelerating series of highly charged and organised moves by settlers into the city's Arab sector. Armed with a court order saying they own the property, the settlers – about 40, according to Ms Kurd – decided to break in just four days after Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, dismayed Palestinian and other Arab leaders by praising the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's "unprecedented" promise of "a restraint" in illegal settlement activity...READ MORE
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