Ban meets evicted Sheikh Jarrah families
Reageer (0)22-3-2010
Jerusalem – UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon met on Saturday with two Palestinian families who were forcibly expelled from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem.
UN Middle East special coordinator Robert Serry attended the meeting at the Notre Dame Hotel, as well as UNRWA Commissioner-General Filippo Grandi and Barbara Shenstone, the director of UNRWA's operations in the West Bank.
The UN delegation met with Maher Hanoun and his daughter Jana, as well as Nabil Al-Kurd, whose homes Israeli settlers occupied by force in August 2009.
"We briefed the UN delegation on the Sheikh Jarrah troubles and demanded that the UN make serious efforts to stop home evacuations and demolition by Israeli settlers in Jerusalem," said Maher Hanoun. "We also asked the UN support to help evicted families regain their homes, and to protect other residents from eviction."
He added: "We briefed Ban Ki-moon on our daily suffering after my own family, my brothers' families, the Abdul-Fattah and Al-Ghawi families, were evicted in August 2009. We told [Ban] that we live on the street, and we updated him on the daily assaults by Israeli settlers against Sheikh Jarrah, in general."
Ban vowed to follow up with the families and do his best to stop settlement activities in Jerusalem.
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