dimanche 20 novembre 2011

Bayt-Lee, properties of West Jerusalem


i have a house in lower Baqa'a, its actually owned and built by Farid Jamal al Imam, my Father,  born in Bab-al Silsileh, the Chain Gate, leading to al Aqsa Mosque;

In his twenties, my Father decided to move out Old City. He bought a piece of land in the Greek Colony, Baqaa' al tahta or the lower Baqaa', today address is 18 Uzia Street, off Emek Refaim, parallel to the railway station.

Father's love to his mother, Ayshah Aweidah, made him buy the land next to the Aweidah Family houses,  where she lived together with her brothers and sister Zleikha (the grandmother of Ahmad).

Father, like many Palestinians was thrown out of his house in 1948 when the Yergun/Stern and other zionist movements were terrorizing and massacring the Palestinian inhabitants living in Lifta, Malha, Deir Yassin and neighbouring villages in the suburbs of the city.

Israel was created with the Absentee Law; which says that every Palestinian who is found in a country at war with Israel is considered abscent and looses the right to return.
My father and thousands of Palestinians were present; they
walked towards a safer neighbourhood at the time, the Old City home or Sheikh Jarrah, a few kilometers away! 

Ethnic cleansing continues with Libeman and Natanyahoo; Today, settlers are given green light by Israeli court to evacuate people 
in Silwan, Sheikh Jarrah and other neighbourhoods occupied in 1967.

What are we doing to prevent them?
We are watching them...steel our homes, selling them to private real estate agents like what Natanyahoo did with 'his privatization initiative' sold my Father's house to Udi Kaplan, who sold it then for 3.5 million dollars!

I would like to walk one day barefooted on the flower tiles which my father has chosen for each room of his home in Baqaa'! 

Bayt-Lee, "une maison a moi"," a house of mine" is a new page in town; Bayt-Lee is just launched on facebook aiming to share, to discuss and document our houses and stories of West Jerusalem;
the page seeks to develop exchange amongst people involved and interested, to tell our stories, to lobby, to claim and to win over our rights to our homes and properties confiscated in 1948.

If you have a home, a piece of land, a gravestone or a flower-tile,

please share....




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