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Israeli security officers forced at least 65 Palestinians to leave their homes in East Jerusalem on Wednesday, Palestinian state media and rights groups said.
Forces stormed the Batn Al Hawa neighbourhood of Silwan, near the Al Aqsa Mosque compound, and emptied a building with 11 apartments, Wafa news agency reported.
On Tuesday, Israeli settlers and security forces had also removed five Palestinian families from homes in the neighbourhood, said Aviv Tatarsky. Mr Tatarsky is a member of the Ir Amim group, which works to uphold the rights of both the Israeli and Palestinian communities in the city.
Mr Tatarsky said the total number of people affected was not immediately clear. “We are still working on getting all the details confirmed,” he told The National.
There have been forced removals of Palestinians in Silwan before, but those on Wednesday raised more concern than usual, he said, because of the number of people affected.
They were carried out under the Absentees' Property Law, after an Israeli family claimed they had lived there before 1948, Mr Tatarsky said.
The law is often applied to take over property owned by Palestinians, despite them having proof of ownership.
“Regarding property owned by Jews before 1948, the law says the owners never lost the ownership and they get it back regardless of who was living there and regardless of what took place between 1948 and 1967,” he added.
The newly emptied homes in Silwan have been handed over to a settler organisation that will determine which Israeli families will live there, Mr Tatarsky said.
Israel controlled only the western half of Jerusalem after its creation in 1948 but seized the predominantly Arab eastern half during the 1967 Middle East war and later annexed it, in a move not recognised by the international community.
The first forced removals of Palestinians from Batn Al Hawa took place in 2015, affecting five families. Now, half of the 100 or so families that used to live there have been forced to leave, and the rest remain under threat, Mr Tatarsky said.
On Tuesday, Israel announced the allocation of contested land that belonged to Palestinian families before 1948 as the site for a new US embassy in Jerusalem.
Israel's occupation and seizure of land and homes in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, as well violence against Palestinians by Jewish settlers, have surged since the deadly attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023 that triggered the war in Gaza.
Settlers attacked Palestinian villages across the northern occupied West Bank on Saturday, in a rampage that activists described as unprecedented, after a settler died when his car collided with a vehicle driven by Palestinians.
With a fragile ceasefire in place in Gaza, Israel is engaged in a war, alongside the US, against Iran.
Mr Tatarsky believes that war is being used to distract the international community from Israel's actions in Jerusalem and the West Bank, and says Israel has been emboldened by the continued lack of action against it.
“Since October 7, Israel feels there’s no restraint on its violence, whether through destroying Gaza or ethnically cleansing the West Bank – and the same applies in Jerusalem and Iran.”
