Statement: New Jewish Narrative Welcomes Ceasefire and Hostage Release Deal (1-15-2025) | |
January 15, 2025- New Jewish Narrative (NJN) welcomes the news of a deal to release thirty-three Israeli hostages held by Hamas and other militants in the Gaza Strip, and to begin to bring this horrible war to an end.
The ceasefire will allow for the return of 33 of the hostages held by Hamas and its allies since October 7th, including women, children, men over the age of 55, and wounded people. In addition, we also welcome the reported agreement to allow Palestinians in Gaza to return freely to the north of the strip, and for the Israeli military to begin withdrawing from Gazan population centers during the first phase of the deal. We anxiously await the implementation of the following phases of the deal, which reportedly will start on the 16th day of the ceasefire and which will clear the path for an end to the war and the return of the remaining hostages.
We are relieved to see a pause in the fighting and the release of these hostages. However, we are horrified at the scale of destruction we have witnessed over the past fifteen months and at how long it has taken for the negotiating parties to agree on a deal. Since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, Israeli society has been in a state of shock and grief. The attack was an act of terrorism, one that Israeli society and the Jewish community around the world are still reeling from. That grief has only magnified each time news has broken that more hostages, thought to be alive, were in fact killed and will never make it home. | |
Settlement Watch/From Shalom Achshav | |
Magistrate’s Court Orders Evacuation of 5 Houses in Batan Al-Hawa, 131 Palestinians to Lose Their Homes to Settlers (1-14-2025) | |
Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court Judge Miriam Kassalsi issued rulings this week in four eviction lawsuits filed by settlers against Palestinians in Baten Al-Hawa in Silwan. The ruling in the fifth case is expected to be issued in the coming days. The five houses are home to 27 families with 131 residents, most of them children. In all cases, the court accepted the families’ claim that they had legally purchased the house in the 1960s (under Jordanian rule). Still, it ruled that because the land belonged to a Jewish endowment before 1948, the Palestinian families must vacate their homes within 6 months. The eviction lawsuit is part of a larger effort to forcibly displace an entire community of approximately 700 Palestinian residents from this East Jerusalem neighborhood and to establish a settlement. The legal basis for these eviction claims is a discriminatory law that allows Jews to reclaim properties lost in the 1948 war, while another law prevents Palestinians from exercising the same right. | |
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