The High Court of Justice notified the state that it does not intend to ignore the issue of the pending eviction of four Palestinian families from the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah and on Wednesday gave Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit until June 8 to submit his opinion on the matter.
It had initially delayed any decision on the issue earlier this month pending a review of the matter by Mandelblit.
The topic is so sensitive that it was presumed that the matter would slowly disappear from the court’s docket. Among the difficulties in presenting a state opinion is the absence of any government.
The four families are among 28 Palestinian families, all of whom could face eviction depending on the resolution of a property dispute with the Nahalat Shimon company, which wants to develop the area for Jewish housing.
The Palestinian families had initially fled cities now within sovereign Israel during the 1948 War of Independence, including neighborhoods in west Jerusalem.
They settled in east Jerusalem, when it was under Jordanian rule in the aftermath of the 1948 war. In 1954 they were given housing by Jordan in exchange for their agreement to give up their rights to be listed as refugees under the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees, a move that denied them food allotments and services such as education and health.
The property remained registered in the name of Jewish owners, which in the case of the four families was two Jewish companies. Their land rights have now been transferred to the Nahalat Shimon company, whose rights to that property have been upheld by two lower court rulings.
The HCJ is now weighing whether or not to hear an appeal. The plight of the families has sparked intense violence in the neighborhood, particularly between the police and the Palestinian residents.
The pending evictions was one of the sparks that led to the 11-day Gaza war which ended last week. The United Nations, the European Union and the United States have all weighed in on behalf of the families.