Evacuation, Displacement and Ethnic Cleansing Policy in occupied Jerusalem returns to forefront

By: Madeeha Al-A’raj
The ‘National Bureau for Defending Land and Resisting Settlements stated in its latest weekly report , that Israeli Occupation Authorities continue targeting the Palestinian people in Jerusalem, escalating their measures against them and preventing them from accessing their rights, even by appealing the racist discriminatory policy practiced against them in the city, placing them before a forced displacement plan under various pretexts in favor of settlers and their settlement associations.
Within the context, the Silwan town and its neighborhoods are once again at the forefront of events, as they plan to displace about 800 Palestinians from the Batin al-Hawa Neighborhood in Silwan from their homes and lands, in conjunction with similar plans to displace another 500 Palestinians from the Sheikh Jarrah Neighborhood. Not far from the Batin al-Hawa neighborhood, more than 100 homes inhabited by 1,550 Palestinians in the Al-Bustan Neighborhood in Silwan are threatened with demolition and displacement. Families who are notified by these authorities of the demolition of their homes face a legal battle in the occupation courts, with the demolition notices being renewed each time.
Noting that the area of Silwan town is 5,640 dunams and includes 12 neighborhoods inhabited by about 58,500 Jerusalemites. There are 78 settlement outposts in the town, home to 2,800 settlers. To further strangle the Palestinians, the occupation introduced Amendment 116 to the Planning and Building Law on October 25, 2017, known as the Kaminitz Law’, one of many racist laws against Palestinians. This amendment poses a significant threat to the Palestinian existence, as it increases the severity of penalties and the speed with which they are implemented without trial. This racist law also introduces amendments to the Israeli Planning and Building Law,-limit-ing the courts authority to freeze demolition orders, transferring enforcement powers to the state s regional committees, and imposing heavy and ongoing fines on owners of unlicensed homes.
In this regard, Israeli Supreme Court Justice Noam Solberg last week rejected a request for leave to appeal filed by the Shweiki and Odeh families, who were ordered to vacate their homes in the Batn al-Hawa Neighborhood in favor of settlers. The two homes are home to three families, including 19 Palestinians, who will be forced to vacate them in favor of settlers linked to the Ateret Cohanim settlement organization.
The eviction lawsuits are part of a broader campaign aimed at forcibly displacing the entire neighborhood, which has a population of about 700. Last year, settlers took over three homes in the neighborhood after evicting the Palestinian families who had lived there. The legal basis for the eviction lawsuits is a discriminatory law that allows Jews to reclaim what these authorities call property lost in the 1948 war, while another law denies Palestinians the same right. The case of these families in the Batn al-Hawa Neighborhood is particularly significant, as several other eviction cases are pending in Israeli courts.
Former Supreme Court Justice Uzi Fogelman, who presided over the case before retiring, asked the Attorney General in December 2022 to present the state s position to the court, given the importance and ramifications of the issues at hand. However, the Attorney General did not submit an opinion. Following Justice Fogelman s retirement, the case was referred to Supreme Court President Justice Amit. However, once it became clear that he was unqualified to hear the case due to his connection to one of the plaintiffs, the case was handed over to Justice Noam Solberg.
This judge had previously rejected appeals in two other eviction cases in Batn al-Hawa, those of the Ghaith and Shehadeh families. He has now ruled that there is no longer a need to wait for the state s position and has also rejected the Shweiki and Odeh families requests for leave to appeal. This means that in other pending cases, the state s position will not be considered unless the state decides to present it independently in those proceedings.
The Israeli Peace Now Movement commented on the judge s rejection of the appeal, asserting that ‘this is an injustice and a crime against a vulnerable group living under occupation in East Jerusalem.’ Adding that the dispossession of Palestinians from their homes in Silwan, in application of the Jewish right of return, represents an indelible stain on the State of Israel, after the Israeli judicial system failed to protect the basic rights of Palestinians in their homes and thus endorsed the racist and messianic policies of the current Israeli government. The International Court of Justice explicitly addressed Israel s discriminatory legal framework and settlement policy in East Jerusalem in its recent advisory opinion, declaring that these practices constitute a violation of international law.’
The case of the Shobaki and Abu Odeh families isn’t isolated from the cases of other families threatened with displacement. Five appeals following an eviction ruling issued by the Magistrates Court in January 2025 are still pending in the courts: the house of Zuhair Rajabi, seven families and 39 individuals-;- the house of Abdul Fattah Rajabi - two families comprising 18 individuals-;- the house of Yaqoub Talal Rajabi - 11 families comprising 44 individuals-;- The house of Yousef Basbous, 4 families, including 21 people, and the house of Khalil Basbous, 3 families, including 9 people, as well as 5 additional eviction lawsuits, including dozens of families. All of these lawsuits are based on the same discriminatory and racist basis enacted by the Knesset in 1970 (the Legal and Administrative Affairs Law), which stipulates that Jews, who owned properties in East Jerusalem and lost them in 1948 can reclaim them from the Israeli Custodian General, in blatant contradiction to the Absentee Property Law of 1950, which stipulates that Palestinians, who lost their properties in Israel in 1948 and became refugees are not entitled to reclaim them.
International law prohibits evictions, a policy confirmed by the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice issued last July. The Court (in paragraphs 119, 122, 163, and 196) referred to Israel s settlement policy in East Jerusalem and the discriminatory legal system, particularly the Absentee Property Law, which results in the eviction of Palestinians from their homes in favor of settlers. The Court ruled that this policy constitutes a violation of international law. In July of last year, the United Nations Human Rights Office in the occupied Palestinian territory expressed concern about the future of about 87 Palestinian families, comprising between 600 and 800 Palestinian citizens, who are threatened with forced eviction from their homes in the town of Silwan in occupied East Jerusalem, facilitated by the application of illegal and discriminatory Israeli laws against Palestinians in the occupied territory.
After listing a number of cases targeted for eviction, the office emphasized that these cases are examples of an ongoing, systematic campaign waged by settlers and the discriminatory application of a set of laws, including Israel s Absentee Property Law and the Legal and Administrative Matters Law of 1970.
Not far from the Batn al-Hawa Neighborhood in the Silwan town, Palestinians in the Sheikh Jarrah Neighborhood in occupied Jerusalem are still suffering and in a state of anxiety about their existence. In this neighborhood, about 600 Palestinians live, belonging to several families, including the Kurd, Eskafi, and al-Qassem families, among others. These families were displaced from their lands in Palestine in 1948, such as al-Baqa a, Deir Yassin, Lifta, Haifa, and Jaffa. At that time, they lived in Karm al-Jaouni and Kabaniyat Umm Haroun.
The residents of this neighborhood, as is clear, are Palestinian refugees who were displaced from their lands and farms in 1948. The Kurd family is a refugee from Haifa, the Sabbagh family from Jaffa, the Dajani family from Beit Dajan and Jaffa, and the Dahoudi and Abu Arafa families, among others, came as refugees from the western neighborhoods of Jerusalem.
The neighborhood is home to families who gave up their UNRWA cards in exchange for a house and a small plot of land from the Jordanian administration. These families are fighting against the settlers living among them, who, with the support of the occupation authorities, especially the far-right Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, are seeking to empty the neighborhood of its original residents. They have taken over three homes whose original owners were displaced and have taken up residence there. These homes have become the nucleus of a settlement the settlers call ‘Shimon Sadik Neighborhood.’ Behind these lawsuits is the settler organization ‘Ateret Cohanim,’ which is active in the Old City and in the Batn al-Hawa neighborhood of Silwan.
Meanwhile, the Nahalat Shimon company operates in Sheikh Jarrah alongside other settler organizations that have no connection to the Jewish residents of the properties. Instead, they seek out their heirs, purchase their properties, and file lawsuits to evict them on ideological grounds, with the aim of establishing settlements in the heart of Palestinian neighborhoods. ‘Nahalat Shimon’ is the bottom line of a network of companies registered in various countries, including the United States, all of which aim to conceal the parties behind the costly legal efforts to expel Palestinian families.
In this context, the recently revealed that more than 680 Palestinians were displaced in the first half of 2025 due to the demolition of their homes on the pretext of lacking building permits issued by the Israeli authorities in Area C of the West Bank, more than double this number during the same period in 2024. The office stated that since the beginning of the military escalation between Israel and Iran on June 13, Israeli forces have continued to tighten restrictions on movement to and within the West Bank.
The main checkpoints on vital roads have been completely closed, all road gates leading to the city of Hebron have been closed, and residents of most Palestinian towns have been prevented from accessing Route 60, the main road linking the north and south of the West Bank. Meanwhile, settler movement on the roads has continued uninterrupted. Israeli authorities also carried out a mass demolition operation in the Khallet ad-Daba’a residential community in the Hebron Governorate, the fourth such incident in 2025. Of the 78 structures demolished in the community this year, 62 percent were provided as humanitarian aid.
On the other hand, the settlers continued their acts of violence and terrorism, covering vast areas in the West Bank. The Ramallah and Al-Bireh Governorate was the most targeted by this violence and terrorism, followed by the Nablus Governorate and then the Hebron Governorate. These terrorists roam the Palestinian countryside carrying rifles, distributed to them by Ben Gvir, and explosive devices. The settler violence and terrorism ranged from the destruction of property, burning homes and cars, bulldozing land, establishing new settlement outposts, and installing iron gates, just like the occupation army does. Settler terrorism reached its peak with the criminal act carried out by dozens of settlers in the town of Kafr Malik in the Ramallah and Al-Bireh Governorate, which resulted in three martyrs and a number of wounded by the bullets of these terrorists.
Army Minister Yisrael Katz bears full responsibility for the settlers crimes after he canceled the administrative detention orders against these settlers and transferred the handling of their crimes to rabbis, such as the terrorist Rabbi Yitzhak Ginzburg, head of the terrorist "Path of Life" movement, who represents the spiritual authority of the hilltop youth and whose pictures are adorned at major intersections in the West Bank.
He also made the decision to appoint Brigadier General (res.) Avichai Tanami, a right-wing settler and member of the "Security Forces" organization, which includes former officers belonging to the extreme right, as a special coordinator for dealing with the ‘Price Tag’ terrorist ‘Hilltop Youth’ in the West Bank. This decision aligns with the positions of forces such as ‘Religious Zionism’ led by Bezalel Smotrich and ‘Otzma Yehudit’ led by Itamar Ben-Gvir, which provide full political cover for these terrorist groups. With the rise of these new martyrs in Kafr Malik, the number of martyrs, who fell at the hands of these terrorist groups since Oct. 7, 2023, is about thirty.
List of Israeli Assaults over the Last Week Documented by the National Bureau:
Jerusalem:
- Demolishing a house, a parking lot, and razed a plot of land in the Ras Khamis Neighborhood of Shuafat Refugee Camp, all of which are owned by Jerusalemite Anas al-Rajabi, without prior warning, for the benefit of settler associations.
- Deciding to seize lands on the street adjacent to Wadi Azriq, starting from the main street leading to the Jaba town and reaching the Aqabat area.
- Demolishing a two-story house in the town belonging to Mutawakil al-Khatib, without prior notice.
Ramallah:
- Launching a large-scale attack on the Kafr Malik town, opening fire, burning vehicles, and destroying property in the southern part of the town, killing 3 citizens and wounding others. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society confirmed that 8 cases of suffocation occurred after settlers burned a house at the ‘Karmlo Jjunction’ near the village of Taybeh.
- Bulldozing and uprooting old olive trees in the lands of the Sinjil town for the third consecutive day.
- Injuring citizen Raqad Juma’ Abu Alia while he was grazing his sheep on his land, in the ‘Marj Sa i Plain’ between the villages of Abu Falah and Al-Mughayyir.
- Demolishing an agricultural room in the town of Beit Liqya.
- Attacking citizens vehicles at the entrance to the Shilo settlement, near the town of Turmus Ayya, throwing stones at them and assaulting their passengers with pepper spray while they were stopped at a traffic light, ignited the lands of citizens who had risen up to confront the settlers attack. Settlers also attacked the Abu Fazaa al-Ka abneh family, east of Ramallah. They burned a car parked in front of a house. This came days after provocative actions by settlers around Bedouin communities, which included chanting religious slogans and -dir-ect threats, in an attempt to impose a new reality on the ground. Local sources reported that a number of settlers fired 5 bullets intensively at citizens and their property in Sinjil, after residents confronted a group of them who tried to bring their sheep between the town s homes. Another group also attacked a citizen from the eastern farm while he was in his vehicle.
Hebron:
- Releasing cattle onto citizens agricultural lands and seized a water well in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron, under the protection of occupation soldiers. In another attack, settlers released their herds of cattle into the vicinity of citizens homes in Khirbet Aqwawis in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron, destroying farmers crops, damaging orchards and fruit trees, and vandalizing agricultural infrastructure such as irrigation canals and wells.
- Killing citizen Moh’d Ahmad Mahmoud al-Hour, 48 and another was seriously injured by settlers bullets in Surif village, who attacked the ‘Al-Qurainat area’, under the protection of Israeli occupation forces, where they fired live bullets at citizens while they were trying to extinguish a fire that settlers had set on the lands there.
- Attacking citizens and their property in Masafer Yatta and set them on fire.
Bethlehem:
- Demolishing an agricultural room, razed land, and filled in a water well in the village of Wadi Rahhal, and uprooted dozens of old olive trees in the village of Husan. Settlers installed 8 iron gates on agricultural roads in the town s lands, 6 of which were in the Wadi al-Abyar area, and 2 in the Faghur and Wadi al-Walaja areas, depriving farmers of access to their lands, estimated at about 12,000 dunams, all of which are planted with grape vines, olives, and other crops.
- Notifying Saeed Fawzi Mah’d Hammad to stop work on the agricultural land, and verbally notified him to stop work on it, as he is building cement retaining walls on it, which will be demolished later. They also seized a digger working on the land (a bulldozer) belonging to Abdullah Yousef Ahmed Hammad, noting that the land has an area of about 10 dunams and its owner intends to work on it for agricultural purposes. Attacking citizens vehicles near the village of Al-Minya and began bulldozing agricultural lands planted with grapevines and almond trees in the Shoshala area, with the aim of expanding the borders of the established ‘Daniel settlement’.
- Bulldozing areas of agricultural land in the ‘Al-Sana area’ in the Husan town, near the intersection of the ‘Beitar Illit settlement’, which led to the uprooting of dozens of olive trees.
Nablus:
- Fencing agricultural land in the Qariot village in the Khirbet Sarra area between the villages of Qaryut and Jalud. Others uprooted dozens of trees between the villages of Aqraba and Majdal Bani Fadel after they raided the lands located between the villages of Majdal Bani Fadel and Aqraba in an area called ‘Suf’ and uprooted and broke about 80 trees there. A citizen was injured in the head after settlers threw stones at him in the village of Asira al-Qibliya, south of Nablus.
- Setting fire to lands in the village and prevented civil Army crews from reaching the fire to extinguish it. In the village of Duma, settlers closed a street north of the village with earth mounds, connecting the village to the village of Majdal Bani Fadel to the north, while others resumed work on establishing a settlement outpost in the Hawara town, south of Nablus. They cut down olive and forest trees in the Jabal al-Ras area of the town, which is 500 meters from citizens homes. They rebuilt ‘barracks’ and set up tents and supplied them with an electricity network.
- Demolishing a two-story house, each 130m2 in area, inhabited by 10 people, after forcing them to evacuate it before the demolition was carried out in the Einabus village,.
Jordan Valley:
- Storming the village of Arab al-Malihat in the lands of al-Mu arrajat and held a provocative party, chanting racist slogans and at the same time trying to steal an iron barracks during the raid before being discovered by citizens who confronted them and fled, while others fenced off more lands in the al-Farisiya area in the northern Jordan Valley.

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