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Palestinian families in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah will avoid being evicted for now.
Israel's Supreme Court ruled that four families in the neighborhood cannot be evicted until a separate legal process determining their eviction status is complete. The ruling is similar to one in 2021 that both Israeli developers and the affected families rejected. However, the Supreme Court this time is making the order mandatory.
"At this point, I will repeat the principle of the compromise issued by the assembled justices," Justice Yitzhak Amit wrote in the majority decision. "But this time, not as a compromise, but as a court ruling binding the two sides, like a mountain hanging over their heads."
In the minority decision, Justice Noam Sohlberg claimed that the residents have not been paying rent, thus should be evicted.
"They have violated their commitments as protected tenants," he wrote, "and it was only just that the [lower] courts ordered their eviction."
Despite the dissent, lawyers for the Palestinian families said they were pleased with the result for now. Ronit Levine-Schnur told The Times of Israel that the ruling was "a great victory for justice," while Sami Arsheid said the decision was "something huge" in comparison to other rulings.
However, some experts are skeptical that the ruling will provide any change in the ongoing conflict, despite Sheikh Jarrah's prominent global appearance.
"The ruling merely calls for a delay of eviction for the benefit of further investigation of the case," University of Notre Dame professor Atalia Omer told Newsweek.
"The authorities have recognized the volatility of the specific struggle of Sheikh Jarrah and the potentiality of another intensification of violence reminiscent of May 2021. I interpret the ruling as a cosmetic mechanism for delaying the outcome."
The conflict in Sheikh Jarrah has become a focal point of the overarching modern Israeli-Palestinian conflict. According to The Times of Israel, the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood was captured by Israeli forces from Jordan during the 1967 war.
Laws were enacted that would allow Israeli citizens to claim properties they believe belonged to them that were taken by the Jordanian government. Newsweek previously reported in 2021 that residents of the neighborhood have been entangled in legal battles over their properties with Israeli settlers.
These battles spread worldwide through social media, with hashtags such as #SaveSheikhJarrah trending online. It also became the center of controversy when Palestinian activists accused Instagram of "removing posts, limiting accounts and outright deactivating profiles" because they were outspoken about the evictions. It is this usage of social media that Omer said was influential not only in the Sheikh Jarrah ruling but also in getting out the message of the Palestinian struggle.
"The ruling issued by the Israeli Supreme Court putting a halt [for now] to the displacement and eviction of the Palestinian families of the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem does not signify a paradigm shift," Omer said, "but rather a recognition of the international visibility of the struggle of this neighborhood due to the masterful deployment of social media [among other protest techniques] in getting the Palestinian narrative out to the world by people like Muna and Mohammed El-Kurd."
While it is easy to boil it down to a property dispute, Omer said that idea is an oversimplification.
"To think of the case of Sheikh Jarrah in terms of a real estate 'dispute' obscures the underlying ideological logic that connects the cases of eviction and displacement in Jerusalem to Hebron, the West Bank, and the settlement project there, and the broader Palestinian experience in Gaza and beyond," she said.
As the legal processes regarding the homes continue, the affected families will continue to be recognized as the sole tenants of their properties. A symbolic rent of $62 a month has been ordered that the families must pay in the meantime. The order will continue to be in effect until the ownership of the properties is settled.
Update 3/1/22, 1:19 p.m. ET: This story has been updated with comments from professor Atalia Omer.
