The expulsion of the Salhiya family and the demolition of its house .. UN concern and calls to stop the displacement of Palestinian families from Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan neighborhoods in Jerusalem | News

The UN Coordinator for the Peace Process, Tor Wencesland, expressed his concern about the possibility of evacuating Palestinian families from the Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan neighborhoods in Jerusalem, after the destruction of the home of a Palestinian family in occupied East Jerusalem at night and the arrest of its members. The UN official called on the Israeli authorities to end the displacement of Palestinians.

In the Security Council, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Maliki denounced, on Wednesday, the expulsion of the Palestinian family and the demolition of its home in East Jerusalem.

During the council’s monthly meeting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which the Norwegian presidency raised to the ministerial level, the minister said, “Israel continues its relentless war against the Palestinian people.”

Al-Maliki added that Israel “uprooted” family members “with their children, threw them into the freezing cold, and arrested a number of family members and their supporters, before demolishing their homes, leaving behind despair and destruction,” according to what was quoted by the Palestinian News Agency (Wafa).

The Palestinian foreign minister called for “an end to Israel’s impunity,” saying that “what will come is apartheid and apartheid in the 21st century.”

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations and the United States, Gilad Erdan, claimed that the issue was “my country’s affair” and that the land was for a school.

For her part, considered the Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs Anken Hoetveldt that “the settlements are a major obstacle to peace.”

She added, in a statement to reporters before the start of the meeting, that “the demolitions and (settlement) expansion continued last night” with the expulsion of a new Palestinian family in East Jerusalem. “All settlement activities, demolitions and evictions must stop,” she added.

UAE Ambassador Lana Nusseibeh, who is of Palestinian origin, expressed the same Norwegian position.

Occupation bulldozers turned the Salihiya family’s home in Jerusalem into rubble (European)

For its part, Washington called, on Wednesday, Israel and the Palestinian Authority to refrain from unilateral steps that exacerbate tension, renewing its support for the option of a two-state solution to the issue of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

This came in a speech by the US Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Linda Thomas Greenfield, during the UN Security Council session.

“This year provides an opportunity to recommit to a political solution to the conflict, and so we reaffirm our strong support for a two-state solution, a solution in which Jewish and democratic Israel live in peace alongside a viable, sovereign, democratic Palestinian state,” Greenfield said.

The US ambassador called on Israel and the Palestinian Authority to refrain from unilateral steps that exacerbate tensions and undermine efforts to advance the negotiated two-state solution, including land annexation, settlement activity, demolition and evictions – as we saw in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood – and incitement to violence.

The US statements come hours after the Israeli police raided a house belonging to the Salhia family in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of occupied Jerusalem, and arrested those in it, before municipal bulldozers demolished it.

Following the demolition, the Palestinian government and armed Palestinian factions warned of the Israeli measures in Sheikh Jarrah and the city of Jerusalem, while Hamas considered that this crime would only increase the people of Jerusalem as fuel for the continuation of the confrontation and the escalation of the resistance in all its forms.

The Salhia family is among the dozens of Palestinian refugee families that settled in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in 1956, after an agreement with the Jordanian Ministry of Construction and Development and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), according to which these refugee families from different regions, following the catastrophe in 1948, gave up their refugee card. which she had.

Months ago, Israeli violations against the residents of Jerusalem, especially the people of Sheikh Jarrah, caused a fierce military confrontation between the Palestinian resistance factions in the Gaza Strip and the Israeli army, last May, that lasted 11 days.