Palestinians face fresh slew of evictions in Silwan, after court dimisses appeal

Dozens of Palestinian families in Silwan will be forced to pack up and leave their homes in the coming weeks, after the Supreme Court upheld a new batch of eviction orders in the East Jerusalem neighborhood.

Late last month, Supreme Court Judge Alex Stein dismissed an appeal by residents against the eviction of 32 households in Batn al-Hawa, an area of Silwan located atop a hill just south of Jerusalem’s Old City.

The families, totalling over 130 people, are sitting tight before the final eviction orders are issued. They expect authorities to come and forcibly remove them from their homes by mid-March or sooner.

“It’s final, absolutely final,” Zuhair Rajabi, one of the residents facing eviction, told The Times of Israel on Thursday. “There is no chance. We are trying to do something [to prevent the evictions], but it’ll probably be difficult, especially with this government.”

It was the latest blow to Palestinians in the neighborhood, who have been gradually pushed out through legal means, making way for Jewish tenants linked to the right-wing Ateret Cohanim organization, which seeks to strengthen the Jewish foothold in Arab areas of East Jerusalem.

Daniel Luria, the executive director of the group, called Palestinians in Silwan “illegal squatters” and said that he was working to rectify a historical injustice.

Rajabi, a father of four, leads Batn al-Hawa’s neighborhood committee and manages youth programs at a local community center near his home. He noted that his appeal is one of many to be rejected by courts in recent weeks, as evictions ramp up in the area.

Several Jewish enclaves now exist within the mostly Arab neighborhood of Silwan, in what residents claim is part of a government-backed effort to dispossess them. Israel maintains that East Jerusalem is an integral part of its undivided capital, and stresses that the Jews moving into the newly-emptied houses do so legally.

“They want to force me out of the house I was born in, where my eyes first opened to life,” Kayed Rajabi told Reuters, after he was handed his final eviction order on Wednesday. He told the outlet that he and his family had lived in the home since before 1967, when Israel captured East Jerusalem in the Six Day War, and bought the land from a Jordanian officer.

Prior to Israel’s independence, the land that Batn al-Hawa stands on was home to Yemeni Jewish immigrants housed there by the Benvenisti Endowment, a trust dating back to the late Ottoman era.

The so-called Yemenite Village lasted until the Arab revolt that took place from 1936 to 1939, when it was demolished by British officials who grew weary of defending Jewish residents. The land remained in the endowment’s hands, then passed into Jordanian hands in 1948 when the kingdom began occupying East Jerusalem. It was then that the properties were leased to Palestinian families.

Israel took control of the lands when it annexed the city’s eastern half after the Six Day War. Three years later, the Knesset passed a law stipulating that former owners would be able to reclaim lands lost during Israel’s War of Independence.

Rights groups allege that the law enforces a double standard, since Palestinians are unable to claim lands their families lost in West Jerusalem following the war.

Evictions began more recently, after Ateret Cohanim obtained trusteeship over the Benvenisti Endowment in the early 2000s.

Kayed Rajabi told Reuters that Ateret Cohanim had offered him a blank check to leave, an offer he refused. “I wouldn’t sell them even a grain of soil. They told me, ‘Put whatever number you want and we’re ready to pay,’” he recounted.

He said that some people in the neighborhood had sold their homes, but that most families had refused.

Luria likewise said that Ateret Cohanim had offered Silwan residents compensation for leaving. “This is part of an unfolding Zionist dream,” said Luria of the purchase of homes in Silwan.

Rajabi said that given the high rents in Jerusalem, he does not know where he and his family will go. “People will live in the streets,” he said.