Israel forcibly displaces more Palestinian families in East Jerusalem. Israel-Palestine conflict news

Rights group says Israel ‘escalating ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem, throwing Palestinian families onto the streets’

Nearly a dozen Palestinian families have been driven from their homes in East Jerusalem, as human rights groups warn that Israel is accelerating a wave of forced displacement across the region.

Israeli human rights group B’Tselem said on Wednesday that at least 11 Palestinian families were driven from their homes in the Button al-Hawa area of ​​Silwan, just south of Jerusalem’s Old City and the Al-Aqsa mosque complex.

“Amidst the ongoing illegal and deadly Israeli-American attack against Iran, Israel is expanding its ethnic cleansing into East Jerusalem, throwing Palestinian families onto the streets,” B’Tselem said in a social media post.

Videos shared online showed a heavy Israeli police presence in the neighborhood, as workers wearing orange, reflective vests removed families’ belongings from their homes.

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), a humanitarian group, said the homes were expected to be transferred to the Israeli settler organization Ateret Kohanim. “More than 1,000 Palestinians in East Jerusalem are at risk of forced eviction,” the group wrote on Twitter.

Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, have faced a growing Israeli population and a wave of military violence in the shadow of Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

At least 1,052 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli settlers and soldiers in the West Bank between the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023 and the end of January this year, according to UN data.

Thousands of Palestinians have also been displaced in the West Bank since the war on Gaza began.

Silwan, which lies just outside the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City, has faced years of pressure from Israeli officials and groups pushing to expand illegal Israeli settlements into the heart of the neighborhood.

More than 200 families unsafe

In early January, Israel’s Supreme Court rejected the final appeal of more than two dozen Palestinian families in Button al-Hawa challenging their potential expulsion.

Israeli rights group Ir Amim noted at the time that the area had seen a “sharp increase in expulsions”, with Israeli settlers already occupying the homes of at least six Palestinian families.

“The eviction cases are based on a discriminatory Israeli law enacted in 1970 that gives Jews a special right to reclaim property allegedly owned before 1948, while denying Palestinians the same right,” the organization said in a statement on January 2.

B’Tselem said on Wednesday that about 90 families in Butn al-Hawa – a total of 700 people – were facing “imminent threat of forced displacement” along with 1,500 others from 150 families in the al-Bustan area of ​​Silwan.

“This is the reality of systematic, institutionalized violence and a clear expression of Israeli policy aimed at engineering the demographic balance and ‘Jewizing’ neighborhoods by taking advantage of discriminatory laws,” the group said.

“These measures are designed to expand Israeli presence and control over one of the most politically and religiously sensitive areas of the region, serving as a critical component of the widespread ethnic cleansing currently underway in the West Bank.”