Anyone who’s been to a demonstration in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem will know the face, and voice, of Salah Diab. A prominent figure in the struggle against efforts by Israeli settler groups and state authorities to “Judaize” the area, the 53-year-old Palestinian can usually be found at the front of Sheikh Jarrah’s weekly protests — leading chants, with megaphone in hand, and doing his best to ignore verbal and physical attacks from police and right-wing counter-protesters alike.

Sheikh Jarrah’s protest movement crystallized in 2009 in response to the eviction of three families in favor of Israeli settlers and the takeover by settlers of part of another family’s home. A slew of additional eviction orders soon followed, including one against Diab’s family. Since then, residents and activists have staged a demonstration every Friday for over 15 years, interrupted only by the COVID-19 pandemic and the latest Gaza war. But in a little over two months, Diab may be homeless.

Last month, the Jerusalem District Court paved the way for the eviction of 22 members of his family from the property they’ve lived in for decades. Rejecting their appeal against a 2022 ruling by the Magistrate’s Court, the judge sided with Nahalat Shimon International, an Israeli settler group that seeks to expel the Diabs and replace them with Israeli Jews.

“We don’t want luxury towers, we don’t want millions, we just want to stay in our home and live our lives,” Diab told +972 after the ruling. “They want to expel the entire neighborhood, destroy it, and build homes for settlers.”

Until now, through years of tortuous legal proceedings, the family had managed to stave off their eviction, even as settlers succeeded in evicting two more families from the neighborhood in 2017 and 2022 respectively. Protests reached a crescendo in May 2021 — as part of the mass Palestinian uprising known as the “Unity Intifada” — when an Israeli court ruled to evict 13 more families in favor of settlers. But while those evictions were ultimately frozen as a result of local and international pressure, the state has pushed ahead with the lawsuit against the Diab family in isolation.

Diab is no stranger to the Israeli justice system. He’s lost count of exactly how many times he’s been arrested over the years during protests, but he estimates it to be between 25 and 30. In 2015, he served five months in prison on trumped-up charges of assault. At a protest three years earlier, police officers broke his leg. “With everything I’ve been through,” he said, “I feel like I’ve lived a thousand lifetimes.”

Expulsion by lawfare

I met Diab last week at his home in the part of Sheikh Jarrah known to Palestinians as Karm Al-Ja’ouni and to Israelis as Shimon Hatzadik, the name of a Jewish high priest from the Second Temple era who is believed to be buried there. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, two religious trusts — the Sephardi Community Council and Knesset Yisrael — purchased land in the area, but it was repossessed by the Jordanian authorities after the Nakba and used by the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) to build homes for Palestinian refugees displaced from areas that became Israel. 

In recent years, settler groups like Nahalat Shimon have sought to use the fact that the land was previously owned by Jewish trusts as a pretext to “reclaim” property there — even though the houses in this part of Sheikh Jarrah were all built during the period of Jordanian rule, between 1948 and Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967. And Israeli law is on their side.

In 1970, the Knesset passed the Legal and Administrative Matters Law enabling Jews who lived in East Jerusalem before 1948 to claim back property from the Israeli Custodian General, which seized them from the equivalent Jordanian body after the 1967 War (no such law exists allowing Palestinians dispossessed during the Nakba to reclaim their properties in hundreds of localities across Israel from their current Jewish owners). The two Jewish religious trusts began legal proceedings to release the neighborhood property from the Custodian General and renew the registration in their name, and in 1972, Israeli authorities ruled in their favor. 

“My mother and father were born in Jaffa, in the Ajami neighborhood, and my grandmother had a café by the sea,” Diab explained. “[Israeli settlers and politicians] claim that this land is theirs, that they bought it in the 19th century — okay, then return our homes in Jaffa, Haifa, and West Jerusalem. A Jew can demand their property anywhere, but we cannot. This is discrimination.”

In 2003, the settler company Nahalat Shimon International — named after another Jewish settlement cluster that existed in the western part of Sheikh Jarrah prior to 1948, and registered in the United States — bought the land from the religious trusts, and has spearheaded efforts since then to expel Palestinians from Sheikh Jarrah and replace them with Israeli Jews.

According to the Palestinian residents, the re-registration of the land in the ’70s was carried out without informing them and without thorough review. The families have also argued in court, on the basis of expert legal opinion, that their homes were not in fact built on the portion of land purchased by the Jewish trusts in the 19th century.

In two rulings in 2021 and 2024, the Supreme Court decided to freeze the eviction of seven families until the completion of a “land rights settlement” for the entire area. Four additional families received the same decision in the Magistrate’s Court. However, in its ruling last month, the Jerusalem District Court determined that the Diab family’s status is not the same as that of the families whose evictions were frozen.

In the meantime, the Diabs are planning to file another appeal, this time with the Supreme Court. They also have to cover NIS 20,000 (around $5,500) in Nahalat Shimon’s legal expenses in the District Court, on top of the NIS 80,000 (around $22,000) they were already ordered to pay the settler group by the Magistrate’s Court.

‘We’re in this for the long haul’

Across from Diab’s house stands the Ghawi family’s property, which settlers took over in 2009, forcing them to leave the neighborhood and rent an apartment nearby. Also in the vicinity is the El-Kurd family home, half of which was taken over by settlers in the same year; two of the El-Kurd children, Muna and Mohammed, have since become global symbols of the struggle against Israel’s displacement of Palestinians in Jerusalem and beyond.

Diab began protesting out of the belief that it could stop further expulsions. “I saw the violent evictions of the El-Kurd and Ghawi families,” he recalled. “I saw that [the settlers] had a plan, and I started looking into it. I told our people that we were in this for the long haul.”

Diab proudly points to the slowing of evictions in the neighborhood since the protests began in 2009. “I don’t care how many people come to a protest; I care about the protests continuing,” he explained. “That’s why they were so successful, for 15-16 years straight. When I was in prison, they continued without me. I don’t want to be a symbol. I’m just a simple person. I want to live in my home like anyone else.”

He also spoke with appreciation about the Israeli activists who “sat with us, slept with us, were arrested with us, ate with us — in winter, rain, snow, heat, during Ramadan, holidays, everything. Thanks to them too, the families stayed, and there is no settlement here.

“We have no problem with Jews; we lived with them [before the Nakba],” Diab continued. “We have a problem with those who want to steal our homes and land, who murder us, lie, and spread hatred. Since the settlers came to the neighborhood, our lives have completely changed. The police are slaves to the settlers.”

The demonstrations in Sheikh Jarrah were thrust into the global media spotlight in May 2021 when Palestinian youth gathered every evening to protest new eviction orders, triggering brutal police repression and drawing the ire of far-right politicians; Itamar Ben Gvir, who was until recently Israel’s national security minister before resigning over the Gaza ceasefire deal, repeatedly set up a faux parliamentary “office” in the front yard of a home whose Palestinian residents were slated for eviction.

After October 7, however, the weekly demonstrations stopped. “I shut everything down,” Diab said. “I’m afraid for our people, that a settler might come and shoot everyone. Today, anyone who talks about peace, justice, or truth is considered a traitor.” The fact that the protests have ceased, he added with concern, helps the authorities and settlers “push through many things under the radar.”

The trash heap of history

Under the shadow of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza, life for Palestinians in Jerusalem has become extremely difficult, Diab explained. “We are not allowed to speak, we are not allowed to protest against the thieves, the liars, the racists. Today, there is no law in this country — it is lawlessness like in the days of the Nakba in 1948. The settlers are taking power into their own hands, and the police and government turn a blind eye.”

But Diab is still hoping the struggle can be revived. “I think about it a lot; I’m looking for the right time,” he said. “But first of all, inshallah, there should be a [full] ceasefire in Gaza. No one benefits from wars except the arms industry. Every drop of blood is a waste.”

In 2018, during Donald Trump’s first term, Diab told me he feared that with Trump’s support, Israel’s right-wing government, together with the Supreme Court and the settlers, would get the green light to take over properties in the neighborhood again. With Trump back in the White House, he believes the danger is back.

After Trump formally recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Diab recalled, “I went to a protest, raised a Palestinian flag, and they attacked me, saying it was forbidden. It felt like the Americans were partners in the Israeli occupation. Now, that’s a million percent certain. Look at what’s happening in Jenin, Tulkarem, Hebron. They talk about ‘peace,’ and at the same time they’re killing us.”

Diab believes his role as a central figure in the protests has increased the settlers’ motivation to evict him. Yitzhak Mamo, who manages Nahalat Shimon’s properties in Sheikh Jarrah, hinted at this when he spoke at a 2018 hearing about the Diab family’s eviction: “Countless pieces of evidence can be found online about [the Diab family’s] activities against the plaintiff [Nahalat Shimon].”

For Diab, though, the fight to evict him is also part of Israel’s broader struggle against Palestinian refugees, which has manifested in the government’s renewed campaign to shut down UNRWA. “They closed UNRWA’s central office in East Jerusalem and want to build a settlement there,” he said. “They want to erase UNRWA because it is the main witness to what happened in 1948. We are part of all this. We are part of the Palestinian people, and part of Jerusalem.”

The District Court ruling states that Diab and his family must vacate their home by May 20, after which the authorities will be able to remove them by force. For now, he refuses to imagine such a scenario. “This is my paradise,” he said. “My whole life has been here. My siblings and I were born here, and my children were born here. I don’t think for a second that I will leave my home.”

He knows that the most he can hope for from the family’s appeal to the Supreme Court is a temporary injunction to freeze the eviction, but still, he remains optimistic. “In the end,” he said, “we will stay here, and the occupation will go to the trash heap of history.”

A version of this article first appeared in Hebrew on Local Call. Read it here.