The Palestinian presence in the Old City of Jerusalem and the surrounding neighbourhoods of the city’s occupied east is “under mounting pressure”, according to Israeli NGO Ir Amim.
In a new statement issued yesterday, Ir Amim highlighted two evictions carried out last week in the Old City and Silwan.
On 3 October, Jewish settlers took over a two-unit building in the Wadi Hilweh section of Silwan, displacing two Palestinian families – seven people, including two children.
According to Ir Amim, “the site includes a sizeable empty lot that could be used to facilitate tours to the future underground tunnel that will run between the Siloam Pools and the Kedem Compound, future headquarters of Elad”, a settler-run organisation that runs the “City of David” site in Silwan.
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Meanwhile, in the early hours of 4 October, settlers also took over a two-storey building (three units) “at a strategic junction in the northern section of the Muslim Quarter of the Old City, just one block from the Haram Al-Sharif”, a takeover “executed by the Ateret Cohanim settler organisation”.
The context for the evictions, Ir Amim says, is “a well-integrated programme of evictions and touristic settlement carried out by private settlers with direct backing of the state, along with wide scale demolition threats and use of national parks as a political tool to thwart Palestinian community development while boosting private settlement inside Palestinian neighbourhoods.”
Over a roughly 30-year period, Elad has taken over a total of 75 homes in the Wadi Hilweh neighbourhood of Silwan, occupied East Jerusalem, in addition to its management of “City of David”.
In Batan Al-Hawa, “aided by the Israeli General Custodian”, Ateret Cohanim “is in the unique position of waging a singular, large scale takeover in a Palestinian neighbourhood”, which Ir Amim calls “the most significant settler takeover since Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem in 1967”.
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Overall, Ir Amim states, there are now “roughly 2,500 private settlers embedded in the hearts of Palestinian neighbourhoods” in occupied territory. A further 180 Palestinian homes are under threat of eviction in East Jerusalem, mostly focused in the Old City and adjoining neighbourhoods.