According to eyewitnesses, local residents in Sheikh Jarrah started to defend themselves, but police forces intervened to support the settlers and fired tear gas and stun grenades at them.

Some local residents urged, on video, their fellow citizens in Jerusalem to come to the neighborhood to help them stand in the face of the settlers.

Dozens of Palestinians are facing imminent dispossession from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah, in what they say is a move to force them out and turn their neighborhood entirely into a Jewish settlement.

The Jerusalem district court already ruled that at least six families must vacate their homes in Sheikh Jarrah soon, despite living there for generations.

The same court ruled seven other families should leave their homes by August 1. In total, 58 people, including 17 children, will be forcibly displaced to make way for Jewish settlers.

The court rulings are a culmination of a decades-long struggle for these Palestinians to stay in their homes. In 1972, several Jewish settler groups filed a lawsuit against the Palestinian families living in Sheikh Jarrah, alleging the land originally belonged to Jews.

These groups, mostly funded by donors from the US, have waged a relentless battle that resulted in the displacement of 43 Palestinians in 2002, as well as the Hanoun and Ghawi families in 2008 and the Shamasneh family in 2017. (ILKHA)