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JERUSALEM (Ma'an) -- A Palestinian family was able to regain control of the disputed Cliff Hotel in the occupied East Jerusalem village of Abu Dis, after a decades-long battle with Israeli authorities.

The family’s lawyer Bassam Bahar, who also heads a local committee to defend Abu Dis lands, said the Ayyad family, which owns the hotel, was able to enter the hotel for the first time since Israeli forces occupied the hotel in 2003 and began using it as a watchtower, citing “security reasons.”

The Israeli authorities had previously taken over the hotel under the Israeli Absentee Property law, which effectively allows Israelis to move into property whose Palestinian owners live in the West Bank or Gaza Strip.

Bahar said that the family’s resistance against Israeli policy of “Judaization” of the area is what enabled the family to regain the property.

In March 2014, Bahar told Ma’an that "Israeli occupation authorities have been trying to confiscate the Cliff Hotel and the land surrounding it under various pretexts and by different means."

Family members Ali and Khalid Ayyad accompanied by a delegation from the Norwegian embassy in Palestine entered the hotel on Wednesday and observed the scale of damage done to the property.
Bahar said that the family was able to enter the hotel after their Israeli lawyer Yotam Hillel issued an order allowing the family to do so.

The case was sparked in 1996 after when Israeli forces took control of the hotel citing security reasons, and then withdrew.

In 2003, the owners of the property faced several confiscation attempts, and Israeli forces took over the roof as a military post and monitoring tower.

Israeli forces installed barbed wire and cameras and closed the rooftop’s door preventing entrance, in addition to confiscating portions of the hotel’s land to build a section of the separation wall.
The family took the case to the Israeli Supreme Court in 2009 and have been fighting in Israeli courts to regain control of the property ever since.

In September 2013, the Israeli attorney general decided that the Absentee Property Law was not applicable to the hotel, and transferred the case to the Supreme Court for a final decision.

In 2014, Israeli bulldozers began constructing a section of the separation wall around the hotel, with Israeli authorities claiming “that an absence of the separation wall in that area jeopardizes the security of the state of Israel," Bahar told Ma’an at the time.
Bahar said Wednesday that Israel intends to take control of the hotel and its surroundings to build a separation wall and a new 200-home Israeli settlement in East Jerusalem to be named Kidmat Zion.

Although Palestinians in East Jerusalem live within territory Israel has unilaterally annexed, they lack citizenship rights and are instead classified only as "residents" whose permits can be revoked if they move away from the city for more than a few years.

East Jerusalem was seized by Israel along with the West Bank in 1967 during the Six-Day War, and since then, the Israeli government has undertaken a policy of "Judaization" across the city, constructing Jewish settlements and demolishing Palestinian homes.
There are now believed to be more than 300,000 Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem.