On May 20, 2025, Saleh Diab, 53, must leave the home he and his family have lived in for decades, according to a Jerusalem District Court judge’s verdict that was delivered on February 20, 2025. The ruling rejected Diab’s appeal against the lower Jerusalem Magistrate's Court 2022 decision to expel the family from their longtime home in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. Diab will soon appeal to Israel’s Supreme Court.

Diab and his family (23 persons in all) have been facing forcible expulsion since 2009, when the Israeli settler organization Nahalat Shimon International filed an eviction lawsuit against the family, claiming ownership of the land on which the Diab home was built. Nahalat Shimon initiated expulsion proceedings under Israel’s Legal and Administrative Matters Law—1970, an amendment to the Absentees’ Property Law—1950, allowing Jews to “reclaim” property in East Jerusalem that they allegedly owned before 1948, even if Palestinians currently live there. These same restitution rights are not granted to Palestinians, who also lost vast amounts of property in West Jerusalem during the 1948 War (see The West Side Story). Under the Absentees’ Property Law—1950, the government can confiscate properties belonging to Palestinians who fled to what they thought was temporary safety or were forcibly expelled from their homes in what became the State of Israel in 1948 and then transfer them to Jewish owners (see How Israel Applies the Absentees’ Property Law to Confiscate Palestinian Property in Jerusalem). Indeed, Diab’s parents were born in Jaffa, in the Ajami neighborhood.

Since 2009, Diab and his family have been tied up in legal battles trying to prevent their expulsion.

But Diab also took the fight to the streets, becoming a prominent leader in weekly Friday protests and demonstrations that started in 2009 and continued weekly up until October 7, 2023, interrupted only by the coronavirus pandemic.

“Who is behind all this is the Israeli government,” Diab told Jerusalem Story.1 “They give [the settlers] the money. They give them everything.”

The area of Sheikh Jarrah was purchased by the Jewish Residential Councils, Sephardic Community Committee, and the Knesset Yisrael Committee in 1875. The Jewish residents were expelled following the 1948 War when the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan occupied the area and received compensation from the State of Israel for the loss of their properties. In 1956, Jordan and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) built homes on the compound in Sheikh Jarrah for Palestinian refugees who were displaced when Israel was founded, on the condition that the families renounce their refugee status. Under this arrangement, the families would be allowed to live in the homes as protected tenants for three years, paying nominal rent, after which they would receive ownership. However, procedures to register ownership were in process when the 1967 War broke out, so final ownership documents were never issued.

When Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967 and then enacted the 1970 Legal and Administrative Matters Law, Sheikh Jarrah was placed under Israel’s General Custodian’s authority, who transferred the land back to the Jewish committees. In 1982, after 10 years of legal proceedings, the attorney for the Sheikh Jarrah residents and these committees reached an agreement whereby the residents would recognize the committees’ ownership to receive protected tenants’ status under Israel’s Tenant Protection Law. The residents say, though, they never gave their approval of this agreement to their lawyer.2 In 2003, Nahalat Shimon bought the compound from the committees with plans to replace the Palestinian homes with 200 settler houses—igniting a legal battle against the residents that is still ongoing today.

Adjacent to the Diab home are the houses of the al-Daoudi, Dajani, Hammad, al-Kurd, Qasim, Skafi, and Jaouni families, who have all been served with expulsion orders but had them temporarily annulled by Supreme Court decisions issued in recent years. The court accepted the argument to keep the families in their homes as protected tenants until ownership rights are determined via the Settlement of Land Title (SOLT), a process that was frozen from 1947 to 2018, when Israel decided to restart it. SOLT finalizes and records property rights of a specific plot of land into Israel’s land registry known as the tabu. While Nahalat Shimon alleges ownership of the area through Israel’s Legal and Administrative Matters Law—1970, the Palestinian residents counter this claim, saying the territory’s former occupier, Jordan, was in the process of issuing the families deeds to the property just before Israel took over, and therefore the land belongs to them rather than ownership guaranteed to another entity through an illegal annexation. Under international law, Israel illegally occupied East Jerusalem in 1967, and its entire unilateral application of its law over East Jerusalem is also illegal (see The Legal Status of Jerusalem: An Introduction to International Humanitarian Law in the Palestinian Context).“The Magistrate and the District Courts ruled that since the Diab family was not one of the original families listed by the Jordanians in the 1950s, they have to be evicted,” Sami Irsheid, the Diab family’s lawyer, told Jerusalem Story, on why the SOLT reasoning wasn’t applied to Diab’s case.3 “We still argue and believe that the family has to enjoy the same judgment that was made for their neighbors.”

Waiting for the SOLT process to be completed will likely just offer a temporary reprieve, however, as the track record on SOLT cases in the city has almost entirely favored the interests of the state and the settlers (see The Settlement of Land Title (SOLT): “The Most Acute Threat Facing Palestinian Residents of Jerusalem Today” and State Land Registration in East Jerusalem Continues to Advance Settlement Goals, Dispossess Palestinians).

With attention focused on Israel’s relentless genocidal war on Gaza, a fragile ceasefire with Lebanon, expanding Israeli occupation in Syria, and possible war with Iran, developments in Jerusalem are often overlooked these days.

“What’s going on after October 7, 2023? You don’t have a law. They’re stealing the houses. They’re stealing the land without law,” Diab said. “But why? Because all the eyes and all the news, they’re speaking about what’s going on in Gaza or in Lebanon or in Syria. And here in Jerusalem, they can do whatever they want.”

Sheikh Jarrah has been hit with challenge after challenge recently. On December 31, 2024, a plan to demolish part of the Umm Haroun section of Sheikh Jarrah and build more than 300 settler homes atop the rubble passed the preliminary stages.4 Days later, discussions to build an 11-story yeshiva (traditional Jewish seminary) at the neighborhood’s entrance kicked off the new year in January. This was followed by Israel’s law banning UNRWA coming into effect on January 30, 2025. The legislation forced UNRWA to vacate its main headquarters in Sheikh Jarrah and the large staff to leave East Jerusalem. And now, the latest blow comes with the Diab case ruling.

Many Palestinians who live and work in the neighborhood view developments in Sheikh Jarrah as the starting point of Israeli settlers’ complete takeover of East Jerusalem.

“The plan for Sheikh Jarrah really will lead to more colonial projects happening in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood and the Wadi al-Joz neighborhood,” Yazan Risheq, who works at the Sheikh Jarrah-based Palestinian educational organization Grassroots Al-Quds, told Jerusalem Story.5

From Sheikh Jarrah, it’s the adjacent neighborhood of Wadi al-Joz, then Jabal Zaytun, Ras al-Amud, and all the way to the Old City, Diab explained, noting that Israel is expanding settlements all across East Jerusalem.

“They want to make all around settlements . . . everywhere [in order] to transfer the Arab people in Jerusalem out of this land,” Diab said.

Yet despite an increasing ring of Israeli settlements shrinking Palestinian space in Jerusalem, Diab refuses to leave.

“Maybe they will take my home,” Diab told Jerusalem Story. “But tomorrow, I’ll come back. After one week, I’ll come back. After one month, I’ll come back. After one year, I’ll come back.”