Glen Johnson: Eviction

Mohammad Hannoun is twelve years old. He loves swimming and playing chess. He goes to school in Shuafat, East Jerusalem, where he studies English and Arabic.

A rotund boy, he often smiles and makes jokes.

At 5.30 a.m. on August 2, 2009, Israeli forces stormed his family’s home of 53 years. They dragged Mohammad outside,passing him from soldier to soldier.

They left him on the sidewalk outside his home.

He saw his father: Saleem, a gentle man with grey hair, being made homeless. He saw his uncle dragged outside.

He saw all of his family’s possessions get loaded onto a truck and taken away. And, from the sidewalk, he saw Jewish settlers carry their belongings into his East Jerusalem home.

Mohammad was made a refugee.

The story of the Hannoun family begins in Haifa 1948, when the family became refugees following the Nakba.

In 1956, the Jordanian Government and UNRWA gave the family a home in Sheikh Jarrah as part of an initiative to help Palestinians displaced by Israel’s creation.

In 1967, Israel occupied the Gaza Strip and West Bank, and unilaterally annexed East Jerusalem to Israel.

Two Sephardic Jewish settler organisations successfully registered the Sheikh Jarrah land in 1972 – using documents allegedly from Ottoman times – and the Hannoun family has been battling to keep their home ever since.

August 2 marked the end of that battle, as the Israeli Police and Magav (Border Police) followed through on an eviction order, adding another 27 people to the more than four million Palestinian refugees scattered throughout the world.

The first time I met Mohammad it was late at night on July 19 and he wanted to play a game of chess.

But one game wasn’t enough, in fact four games straight weren’t enough. Eventually, his father Saleem led him off to bed, after a promise of more chess the next night.

Saleem returned with two cups of coffee and some hand-rolled cigarettes from Jericho and spoke of his concerns.

“What will happen to my boy if they evict us? He will grow up a refugee and he will learn to hate,” he said.

He was on the verge of tears. A sixty year-old man.

“People say that Arabs are terrorists. We are not terrorists. My son is a good boy, but if he sees them throw us out, then he will grow up on the streets and want to kill them. I can’t see my boy grow up to hate.”

That night, Israeli Police drove past at regular intervals. Sometimes they would stop and stare at the people sitting outside the house, other times they would take photographs or turn sirens on and wave.

An assortment of people were staying at the house. Activists, left-wing Israelis, Palestinians from East Jerusalem.

Over the next seven days, I grew very fond of Mohammad.

During our games of chess he would help me with my Arabic and laugh at my pronunciation.

He would play hide-and-seek with his sisters, teach me “cool” new handshakes, and ask what New Zealand was like and why I was in Jerusalem.

In one of our chess games he lost his knight, slapped his leg and exclaimed: “Bis me la,” followed by “this is too many killers”.

I asked him what “Bis me la” meant.

“It means a bad surprise. You say it when a bad thing happens,” he said.

Another night, he made drum noises with his mouth and insisted that I sang. Laughing he went inside and brought back some watermelon.

However, there was the constant threat of the Police. They drove past regularly, and, over time, it became hard for the international activists to maintain numbers.

Every night, the internationals stayed up until 5 a.m. – waiting – while the family got what sleep they could.

The mainstream media seemed to have lost interest in the story and Saleem had become increasingly concerned.

“It is wrong to take my home to build a Jewish settlement.

“My years have become years of nervousness. Waiting. Hoping that the right thing will be done for us.”

Several more days passed and at 6.30 a.m. August 2, I received a phone call from a contact at the house.

His voice was shaking: “They came this morning and arrested all the internationals. They have evicted the family.

“The area is sealed-off, I’ll call when you can get in.”

At five in the afternoon he called again: the area was open.

Down at the house, around 40 Magav stood. With M-16s and batons, pistols. Lights were on inside the home.

More than 100 protestors were present, yelling slogans from the sidewalk.

I looked around for the Hannoun family. Saleem was sitting on a ledge, his eyes were puffy.

I shook his hand, but didn’t know what to say - so asked where Mohammad was.

He said: “What will we do? Where will we sleep?”

A person involved with the International Solidarity Movement told me about the morning’s arrests.

“They evicted another family from Sheikh Jarrah at the same time. They also bulldozed Um Kamel’s tent.”

Um Kamel is an old Palestinian woman who lives in a tent in Sheikh Jarrah on privately owned Palestinian land.

She was evicted from her Sheikh Jarrah home in November last year. Her husband – Abe – was thrown down a set of stairs during the 3 a.m. eviction. He died from a stress-induced heart attack in a hospital two weeks later.

Since then she has been living in the tent in Sheikh Jarrah, with signs hanging: “Stop ethnic cleansing.”

The sun had set and I found Mohammad.

He was almost crying and I gave him a hug.

He had a bruise on his arm and he told me what happened.

“When the soldiers came there was a big smash. They took my uncle.

“I was scared and my legs were funny and I fall on the floor. The soldiers took my arm and dragged me outside. They hurt me.”

Tears slipped down his face, so I asked him if he wanted to play with my camera. He nodded.

It was dark and I showed him where the flash button was. He said “wait here” and ran off.

A man turned up on a motorcycle and began taking photographs of the protestors. He took his helmet off and proudly placed a yarmulke on his head. Then the man continued taking photographs.

Mohammad came back and showed me the photographs that he had taken.

A car.

The back of a boy’s head.

A streetlight.

He sat down and I asked him to tell me more about what happened to him.

“They dragged me outside. I was like a football. From soldier to soldier I went.”

He looked at the Magav on the other side of the road, guarding the settlers now living in his home.

His face was angry.

“I can’t see these dogs. I want to kill them. I hate these dogs.”

Glen Johnson is a New Zealand journalist based in Jerusalem. This article is a revised version of the original, written August 2.

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