Israeli police crackdown on peaceful anti-eviction Sheikh Jarrah protest

Israeli police on Sunday evening violently dispersed a peaceful protest in East Jerusalem against the planned displacement of Palestinian residents in Sheikh Jarrah.

Israeli officers fired tear gas and stun grenades to disperse the crowds, wounding one Palestinian youth in the hand.

Palestinians have rallied to protest the order for 28 families - or around 550 people - to leave their homes to make way for Israeli settlers.

Dozens of Palestinians took part in the march, carrying banners calling on the international community to intervene to stop the eviction of historical Jerusalemite families from their homes, Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

Demonstrators also called on all Palestinians to stand in support of the residents of Sheikh Jarrah.

An Israeli court on Sunday postponed a decision to evict the Palestinians from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah district of East Jerusalem until next Thursday

Sunday's march is the latest in a string of efforts to stop a process of forced evictions of Palestinians in Jerusalem to make way for Israeli settlers.

Palestinians have called on Jordan to provide documents that would prove that the 28 homes earmarked for eviction are owned by the kingdom.

Displaced from their homes in the coastal cities of Yafa and Haifa, the families had relocated to the Jerusalem neighbourhoods of Karm Al-Jaouni area in Sheikh Jarrah, which was then under the Jordanian mandate.

Jordan says it constructed the houses for East Jerusalem refugees following the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.

Dhaifallah Ali Al-Fayez, an official spokesman for Jordan's ministry of foreign affairs, told Arabi 21 on Sunday that the search for the documents that would attribute the right to ownership to the Palestinian people was "still ongoing".

In April, it was reported that Jordan's most senior diplomat had provided this evidence to the Palestinian Authority. Al-Fayez said the documents currently under search were more important than those previously provided to the authority.

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