700 Palestinians from Jerusalem threatened with eviction after Israeli Supreme Court ruling
Israeli forces evict residents of in Batn al-Hawa neighbourhood in Silwan on claims of being built on Jewish-owned land in June 2021
Jihad Barakat reports in The New Arab on 27 June, 2025:
Around 700 Palestinian residents of Jerusalem’s Batn al-Hawa neighbourhood in Silwan fear imminent eviction following a recent ruling by Israel’s Supreme Court.
The ruling, issued on 18 June with no right of appeal, ordered the evacuation of a property made up of three residential apartments which belongs to the Shweiki and Odeh families.
However, locals also fear the step may lead to eviction plans for 87 other threatened homes in Batn al-Hawa being implemented.
Residents of the Jerusalem neighbourhood which lies on the southern flank of the Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound in East Jerusalem have been battling eviction since 2015.
In that year, the Israeli settler association Ateret Cohanim began filing legal claims for a plot of land in Batn al-Hawa, based on a decision by Israel’s “Custodian of Absentee Property” which claimed that the land measuring five dunums and 200 sqm was rightfully owned by Yemeni Jews dating back to the Ottoman era in 1881.