East Jerusalem
The Silwan area, located south of the Old City of Jerusalem and annexed to the city’s municipal boundaries, is home to some 20,000 Palestinian residents. Its unique location next to the Old City, near al-Aqsa Mosque for Palestinians and the Temple Mount for Jews, puts it at the forefront of the Israeli regime’s campaign of dispossession and displacement in Jerusalem, as part of a broader plan to cleanse the area of its Palestinian residents and Judaize the neighborhoods surrounding the Old City. This plan is actualized through several racist mechanisms, including discriminatory legislation such as the Absentee Property Law and various municipal by-laws; the deliberate absence of detailed planning schemes for construction in Palestinian neighborhoods; and designation of land as national parks or other national projects in order to justify the dispossession. In Silwan, joint efforts by settler organizations and state authorities to Judaize the area are focused on three projects currently underway: excavation of the so-called Herodian Street, demolition of homes in al-Bustan neighborhood, and eviction of residents from Baten al-Hawa.These efforts place the residents of Silwan under very real threat of eviction from their homes and dispossession of their land. Over the past two years, evictions in the neighborhoods of Baten al-Hawa and Wadi Hilwa, where the City of David tourist site is located, together with home demolitions in al-Bustan, have left hundreds of residents homeless.In Baten al-Hawa, from October 2015 to April 2026, 33 families were evicted – a total of 77 people, 37 of them children. Fifteen of them were evicted in March 2026. Now, another 53 families are facing expulsion – a total of 237 people, 130 of them children.Many Palestinian families challenged eviction orders in court, but their petitions were dismissed in a series of rulings issued in late 2025, ordering 157 neighborhood residents to vacate their homes. In several cases, the evicted families were even ordered to pay the settlers tens of thousands of shekels in compensation. As of February 2026, 28 families from Baten al‑Hawa face immediate risk of eviction after the court denied them leave to appeal, ruling legal proceedings in their cases had been exhausted. Several additional court cases concerning dozens of neighborhood families are still pending before the Magistrates’ Court or awaiting decisions on appeals to the Supreme Court.Meanwhile, in the nearby neighborhood of al-Bustan, 48 homes were demolished from October 2023 to April 2026 following demolition orders issued by the Jerusalem Municipality. Fourteen of them were demolished in March-April 2026, with 56 residents evicted, 20 of them children. The remaining 123 families are in danger of expulsion – a total of 1,450 people, 900 of them children. The municipality has issued demolition orders for 17 of the homes.In 2010, the Jerusalem Municipality under Mayor Nir Barkat proposed establishing a tourist park named King’s Garden on al-Bustan land, as a direct extension of the Jerusalem Walls National Park and the City of David archaeological site. The latter has been operated since the 1990s by Elad, a settler organization that openly works to Judaize Silwan. In early February 2026, four bulldozers working in the service of the Jerusalem Municipality entered al-Bustan and demolished walls, fences, storage structures, gates and commercial properties belonging to neighborhood residents, without prior notice. The demolition was justified through the manipulative use of a municipal by-law ostensibly intended to allow the “removal of obstacles from the street.” The targeted structures, however, had been standing for years on land that was never designated as a street. Despite a District Court order to halt the demolition, the bulldozers continued destroying buildings in the neighborhood.To prevent these demolitions and evictions, the international community must urgently and effectively intervene to demand an end to the Israeli regime’s criminal policy of forcible transfer.The goal: full Judaization of SilwanImmediately after Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967, it annexed some 70,000 of the West Bank in violation of international law, and brought some of them under Jerusalem’s municipal jurisdiction. In the years that followed, the city’s socio-geographical composition was reengineered, and the state allocated about one third of the annexed territory to building Israeli settlements such as Armon Hanatziv, Gilo, East Talpiot, Ramot, Neve Ya’akov, Pisgat Ze’ev, Ramat Shlomo, French Hill, Har Homa and Givat Hamatos. The official purpose of these settlements was to secure a Jewish majority in Jerusalem and cement Jewish territorial contiguity. Another tool used by the authorities to Judaize the city has been the establishment of Jewish enclaves in the heart of Palestinian neighborhoods, such as the Shimon Hatzadik compound on land belonging to Sheikh Jarrah, or the so-called renewed Jewish Quarter within the Muslim Quarter of the Old City. The actions pursued by Israel in Baten al-Hawa and Wadi Hilwa in Silwan follow the same path.Silwan lies within what is also known as the Holy Basin, which includes the Muslim and Christian quarters of the Old City, Sheikh Jarrah, a‑Tur (Mount of Olives), Wadi al‑Joz, Ras al‑‘Amud and Jabal al‑Mukabber. Due to its geographic location, Silwan is rich in archaeological and historical sites, which Israel uses to justify planning and zoning policies that restrict Palestinian development and promote Israeli control in the area. Declaring land as a national park, archaeological site or nature reserve serves, in practice, as a tool for dispossessing Palestinian residents of their land. Moreover, the development of these areas as heritage sites is carried out in close cooperation with far-right NGOs, particularly Ateret Cohanim and Elad. This joint effort serves a clear political objective: creating a Jewish strip of territory that severs the contiguity of Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem and cuts them off from the rest of the West Bank.The takeover and expulsion mechanism: Baten al-HawaThe expulsion of Baten al‑Hawa’s residents is the first time an entire Palestinian community in East Jerusalem has been forcibly displaced since 1967. It relies primarily on the 1950 Absentee Property Law, which applies to the property of Palestinians expelled from their homes during the 1948 Nakba, and on the 1970 Legal and Administrative Matters Law, which effectively allows only Jews to claim title to property owned before 1948. Another route used by settler organizations to take over properties operates through the office of the Guardian General, a statutory entity formed when the state was established and empowered to administer Jewish trusts (‘hekdesh’) in East Jerusalem. These are properties owned by Jewish trusts before 1948 and dedicated to public purposes, which are now managed via a trustee. The use of a trust to claim title to property provides legal justification under Israeli law for the expulsion of Palestinian residents from their homes. In 2001, the Jerusalem District Court approved the Guardian General’s decision to transfer management of the Benvenisti Trust to members of the Ateret Cohanim organization. In 2002, the land where the buildings housing most of the families facing displacement was transferred to this trust by the Guardian General, and a further three-dunam plot, housing 10 more Palestinian families, was sold to the trust in 2005.Pursuant to the Absentee Property Law and the Legal and Administrative Matters Law, in combination with the fact that the Guardian General facilitates Jewish takeover of homes previously owned by Jews, Palestinian residents who lawfully purchased these homes are being stripped of their property and left defenseless.Backed by private security guards paid for by the Israeli Ministry of Housing to the tune of hundreds of millions of shekels per year, Jewish settlers in the neighborhood harass Palestinian residents, violently confront them, and frequently get Palestinians arrested by the police on various pretexts. In addition, as settlers moved into the neighborhood, Israel Police and Border Police presence increased dramatically. Officers also use violence against Palestinians, issue threats, detain minors and disrupt daily life. And so, even before they are physically expelled from their homes, Baten al‑Hawa’s residents suffer relentless abuse, fully backed by Israeli state institutions and security forces, which makes their lives unbearable and is intended to push them to leave “voluntarily.” Palestinian residents also suffer from gross, ongoing neglect in terms of public infrastructure and services that should be provided by the Jerusalem Municipality: many streets are unpaved, garbage is not collected and left to pile up in the streets, and street lighting is limited.Gross discrimination between Jews and Palestinians under Israel’s apartheid regime is not confined to discriminatory legislation. It is also manifested in planning, budgeting and service provision. While Palestinian residents of Silwan endure deliberate neglect underpinned by systematic state violence, settlers in the Jewish enclaves in the neighborhood, such as the Yemenite Village or Kfar Hashiloah within Baten al‑Hawa, or the City of David in Wadi Hilwa, enjoy around the clock security and modern services and infrastructure, including paved access routes and wider, better‑lit streets, financed in part by taxpayer money.These families are being forcibly displaced in violation of international law with the full backing of Israel’s Supreme Court, which, while accepting the Baten al‑Hawa families’ claim that they purchased their homes lawfully, ruled that the settlers’ property rights prevail,In Silwan, as in other Palestinian neighborhoods of Jerusalem and Palestinian villages across the West Bank, the Israeli regime uses every tool at its disposal to dispossess Palestinians of their land. The goal of removing Palestinians from their homes is pursued out in the open, through legislation manifesting the core features of Israel’s apartheid regime, via the court system, and in cooperation with settler organizations, with matching efforts to make Palestinians’ lives unbearable through systematic neglect and violence perpetrated by both official and unofficial actors.This is the reality of systematic, institutionalized violence in which Palestinian residents of Jerusalem live daily under Israel’s apartheid regime, stripped of their most basic rights. Confronting this reality requires urgent and immediate intervention by members of the international community.
22 March 2026
