LATELY, we often hear the name "Sheikh Jarrah" in reports on the atrocities committed in Palestine by the Israeli government.
The name refers to a neighbourhood in East Jerusalem where many Palestinians live.
They are facing a very worrying and tragic situation because Israel is seizing the land, demolishing homes and driving people out of the area.
To understand why, we need to go back to the Palestine of the 19th century. At that time, Palestine was under the control of the Ottoman Caliphate, while in Europe, Jews were being oppressed.
As a result, a group of them decided to migrate to a place where Jews could live safely and no longer be a target of persecution. They called themselves Zionists and later moved to Palestine due to its historical connection to Jews.
But the problem was that indigenous Palestinians had lived there for thousands of years.
The Zionists decided that the only way a homeland for the Jews can be established was to colonise the land, and drive the Palestinians out.
In other words, it was a settler-colonial project. Their plan was supported by the British government, which succeeded in taking power over the area after the fall of the Ottoman Caliphate in 1925.
Palestinian Arabs opposed it and engaged in armed resistance. Unfortunately, Palestinian resistance efforts failed to curb the ethnic cleansing on their land by Zionists who were in possession of more sophisticated weapons, more organised and brutal.
In 1948, following numerous massacres of Palestinian villagers, Zionists seized more land and declared the new state of Israel, which was immediately recognised by the United States.
About 750,000 Palestinians became refugees. Some from West Jerusalem and elsewhere ended in Sheikh Jarrah, east of Jerusalem, which was then under the control of the Jordanian government.
The move was agreed to by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. The Palestinian families were promised permanent titles to their home and would no longer have the status of refugees.
Unfortunately, the Jordanian government failed to implement this promise. In 1967, there was another war between the Arab states and Israel, which resulted in Israel gaining control of East Jerusalem, including Sheikh Jarrah and all of the West Bank.
Despite the Israeli occupation, the Palestinian population in Sheikh Jarrah continued to grow, and by 2016, 327,000 people lived there. Under international law, Israel is supposed to withdraw from the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
But Israel refused to end its occupation of the areas it gained. In fact, the Israeli government has facilitated the establishment of hundreds of new Jewish settlements in the West Bank and relocated thousands of Jews there and in East Jerusalem, including to the Sheikh Jarrah district.
It claims that the areas were historically Jewish property for thousands of years, based on the teachings of their religious texts.
In 1970, the Israeli government passed a law that officially allowed Jews in Israel to take over land and houses in East Jerusalem if it was proven the properties were once owned by Jews who had to move out as a result of the 1948 war.
But Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah and elsewhere who had been forced to leave their homes in historic Palestine during the war were not given similar rights to move back to their homes.
The injustice of Israeli law is obvious to all.
During the latest incident on Jan 22, Israeli troops entered a Palestinian family's home and detained them for refusing to vacate. The house was demolished so that the family cannot return.
The fact is, the Zionist regime has planned since before the establishment of the illegal state of Israel to seize all Palestinian territories, including the West Bank and Gaza, and will not stop until their plan is achieved.
Unfortunately for them, Palestinians are not giving up efforts to defend their rights and liberate their country from Zionist occupation, even though thousands have been killed and thousands are languishing in Israeli jails.
People with conscience from all over the world, if they are to remain true to their claim of upholding justice and human rights, have no choice but to help Palestinians in their noble struggle for freedom, justice and equality.
The writer is a professor at Universiti Malaya's Faculty of Business and Economics and chairman of BDS Malaysia
