More crocodile tears over the shepherd hotel

On Sunday, Israeli bulldozers demolished the historic Shepherd Hotel in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of East Jerusalem. This hotel was built in the 1930s as a home for the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini. He never lived there and was exiled by the British in 1937. Following the 1948 war the house, like the rest of East Jerusalem, was under Jordanian administration. It was then converted into a hotel, catering mostly to pilgrims. However, after the 1967 war, when Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank it was confiscated by the Israeli government under the infamous “Absentee Property Law”. Under this law, which is simply a device for the theft of Palestinian land, the Israeli government gave itself the power to take over all land owned by Palestinians who were not present on their property at a certain date. As an occupying power, Israel has no authority to implement this law in East Jerusalem, which is recognised by the international community as illegally occupied land.

http://www.middleeastmonitor.org.uk/articles/middle-east/1945-more-crocodile-tears-over-the-shepherd-hotel