Jerusalem – Peace activists in Toronto may be protesting TIFF’s Tel Aviv Spotlight, but here in the Holy Land, the conflict drags on.[rssbreak]
That’s what a trio of Canadian MPs found out when they arrived at the Ambassador Hotel in mid-August and discovered they were around the corner from the front lines.
Strolling down to the Old City to grab dinner, Liberal Borys Wrzesnewskyj, NDPer Libby Davies and BQ rep Richard Nadeau, all members of the Canada-Palestine Parliamentary Friendship Association, were confronted by police cars.
At the roadside in the neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah stood a tent just outside the former house of the Gawis family, evicted by authorities in the early hours of August 2.
Further along, the three came upon a collection of plastic lawn chairs on the sidewalk, the makeshift camp of the Hannouns, another evicted family. In the last short while, 53 Palestinians have been ordered from their East Jerusalem homes.
“Obviously, East Jerusalem is going to be key for negotiations,” says Wrzesnewskyj. The Etobicoke Centre MP has had his own trouble with negotiations he had to resign as Liberal foreign affairs critic in 2006 when he caused a firestorm by saying it was time for talks with Hezbollah.
Speaking by phone from Canada on his return, he says that everywhere he went on the August 8 to 13 fact-finding mission, he was surprised by the optimism largely arising from the new U.S. administration. Still, he says, “The removal of families from East Jerusalem coming now almost seems like a challenge to the [U.S] president.”
The case of the Hannoun family demonstrates the complexities. They have been living in this area, close to the Green Line separating East and West Jerusalem, since 1956, when the UN Relief and Works Agency made an agreement with the Jordanian government to build them housing.
Decades of legal fighting followed. A court ordered the Hannouns’ eviction following an appeal by Nahalat Shimon International, a Jewish settler group claiming ownership of land in Sheik Jarrah based on deeds from the Ottoman rule in the 1800s.
The official complaint was that the family did not pay rent. The Hannouns’ position is that paying rent means conceding their right to land they believe they legally own.
The U.S. has already criticized the evictions as destabilizing, and Canadian Foreign Affairs spokesperson Rodney Moore says, “Canada registered its concerns directly to the Israeli government on this issue.”3
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