Description

Photos: Published by Btselem
The Silwan area, from which Israel plans to expel about two thousand of its Palestinian residents. Photo: Omri Eran-Vardi, Activestills, 4.1.25

An armed settler walks down a street in Baten al-Hawa with a toddler on his shoulders. Photo: Omri Eran-Vardi, Activestills, 4.1.25
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Btselem Report
March 22, 2026 Updated: April 27, 2026

The Silwan area, located south of the Old City of Jerusalem and annexed to the city's municipal territory, is home to approximately 20,000 Palestinian residents. Its unique location near the Old City, the Al-Aqsa Mosque for Palestinians, and the Temple Mount for Jews, places it at the forefront of the Israeli regime's expulsion and dispossession efforts in Jerusalem. These efforts are part of a broader plan to purge the area of ​​its Palestinian residents and Judaize the neighborhoods surrounding the Old City . A number of racist mechanisms support the expulsion plan, including discriminatory legislation that includes, among others, the Absentee Property Law and municipal bylaws , the deliberate absence of master plans for construction in Palestinian neighborhoods , and the declaration of areas as national parks or national projects in order to justify the dispossession. In Silwan, the joint effort of settler associations and state agencies to Judaize the area is centered around three projects being promoted in parallel: the excavation of Herodian Street , the destruction of the al-Bustan neighborhood, and the evacuation of residents of the Baten al-Hawa neighborhood.

Despite these efforts, Silwan residents live under the real threat of eviction from their homes and confiscation of their land. In the past two years, evictions in the Batin al-Hawa and Wadi Hilweh neighborhoods, within which the City of David is located, and the demolition of homes in the al-Bustan neighborhood, have left hundreds of residents homeless.

In the Batin al-Hawa neighborhood, between October 2015 and April 2026, 33 families, numbering 77 people, including 37 children, were evicted from their homes. 15 of them were evicted in March 2026. An additional 53 families, numbering 237 people, including 130 children, are at risk of eviction.

Many Palestinian families appealed against the eviction orders, but their appeals were rejected in a series of court rulings issued in late 2025, ordering 157 of the neighborhood's residents to leave their homes. In some cases, the evicted families were even forced to compensate the settlers with tens of thousands of shekels. 28 of the families face immediate eviction after the court rejected their appeal and determined that the legal proceedings in their cases had been exhausted. Several additional lawsuits involving 25 families from the neighborhood are pending in the Magistrate's Court or are awaiting a decision on appeals filed with the Supreme Court.

At the same time, in the nearby Al-Bustan neighborhood, 48 houses were demolished between October 2023 and April 2026 following demolition orders issued by the Jerusalem Municipality. 14 of the houses were demolished in March -April 2026, and 56 residents were evicted, including 20 children. The 123 remaining families in the Al-Bustan neighborhood, numbering 1,450 people, including 900 children, are at risk of eviction. The municipality has issued demolition orders against 17 of the houses.

In 2010, the Jerusalem Municipality, headed at the time by Nir Barkat, proposed establishing a tourist park called "King's Garden" on the territory of Al-Bustan, as a direct continuation of the National Park around the Walls of Jerusalem and the archaeological site "City of David". This site has been operated since the late 1990s by the Elad Association, which is openly working to Judaize Silwan . In early February 2026, four bulldozers in the service of the Jerusalem Municipality invaded Al-Bustan and demolished walls, fences, warehouses, gates and businesses belonging to the neighborhood's residents, without prior notice. The demolition was justified by biased use of a municipal by-law intended to allow for "removal of obstacles on the street" - even though the buildings that were demolished had stood for years on an area that was not even defined as a street. Despite the District Court ordering a halt to the demolition, the bulldozers continued to demolish the buildings in the neighborhood.

To prevent the demolition of homes and the expulsion from neighborhoods, urgent and effective intervention by the international community is required, demanding a halt to the criminal expulsion policy implemented by the Israeli regime.

The goal: complete Judaization of Silwan

Immediately after the occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967, Israel annexed approximately 70,000 dunams of the West Bank to its territory in violation of international law; some of these areas were added to the municipal area of ​​the city of Jerusalem . In the years since, the city's borders have been redrawn. A third of the areas annexed were dedicated to the construction of state-owned settlements, including: Armon Hanatziv, Gilo, Talpiot Mizrahi, Ramot, Neve Yaakov, Pisgat Ze'ev, Ramat Shlomo, the French Hill, Har Homa and Givat Hamatos, whose stated goal was to ensure a Jewish majority in Jerusalem and establish Jewish territorial continuity. Another means by which the authorities promote the Judaization of the city is the establishment of Jewish complexes in the heart of Palestinian neighborhoods, such as "Shimon the Righteous" on Sheikh Jarrah lands, or the "Renewed Jewish Quarter" in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City. This is also the case in Baten al-Hawa and Wadi Hilweh in Silwan.

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