On Wednesday, Jordan’s chief diplomat provided the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah with documents intended to benefit in the prevention of Israel from expelling Palestinian families from part of Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem.
Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi made the trip to the West Bank after an Israeli court reportedly gave the families until May 2 to leave their homes in the predominantly Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah or be evicted.
Jordan controlled the West Bank, including the Arab majority East Jerusalem, until the 1967 war and remains the custodian of Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem.
The Kingdom says it built homes for Palestinian refugees in East Jerusalem after the creation of the Jewish state in 1948.
“All the documents we hold on property and land in Jerusalem have been passed on to the Palestinian Authority,” Safadi said in Ramallah.
“We are cooperating with the Palestinian Authority and the international community to prevent the expulsion of the Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah” he further stated.
Jordan’s Foreign Ministry said it had “found the documents proving that the Ministry of Development that built these houses had, in 1956, finalized lease agreements for homes in Sheikh Jarrah”.
It said the contracts between the Jordanian government, which owned the houses, and Palestinian tenants, were certified by UNRWA, the United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees. According to the documents, the houses were for 28 families.
