July 30, 2021
They stare out with determination and conviction from the facades of over 20 buildings in Batan al-Hawa, one of 12 neighborhoods that make up the East Jerusalem Palestinian village of Silwan, overlooking Wadi Hilwa and facing West Jerusalem and the Old City. Their presence is particularly powerful when viewed from a distance: a multitude of large human eyes, variously colored and shaped, facing the world as if to say, “Please look at me now.” Their curious presence, which proliferates through Batan al-Hawa, a neighborhood located in the heart of Silwan where approximately 85 Palestinian families have been facing evictions for decades, would prompt anyone to inquire into their raison d’etre.
JERUSALEM: An Israeli court Wednesday postponed a hearing in a case that could see two Palestinian families expelled from their homes in occupied east Jerusalem’s Silwan district so Jewish settlers can move in, their lawyer said. The delayed hearing on the dispute comes less than three weeks after a similar case in the city’s Sheikh Jarrah district sparked the tensions that
East Jerusalem – Fakhri Abu Diab, 59, may soon have to decide whether he should contract a crew to demolish his family’s building.
Diab is a community activist and one of several Palestinian residents of the Al-Bustan neighbourhood in Silwan, occupied East Jerusalem, served with demolition orders by Jerusalem’s Israeli-run municipality in December.
He built his property – in which 13 family members live across three units – without permission, having been denied permission four times since he first applied in 1987.
If the municipality carries out the demolition order, served on December 9, the cost could be $30,000.
Diab says that, if he loses his home, “I have no alternative at the moment but to put up a tent”.
THE television in Zuheir Rajabi s lounge does not show films or the news: the only footage projected on its huge flat screen is from 10 surveillance cameras installed around his modest east Jerusalem home.
Rajabi lives in Silwan, a poor neighbourhood just outside the Old City in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, made up of dusty trash-strewn alleys, with electrical cables dangling low off their poles.
The moustached 49-year-old Palestinian told AFP that the surveillance footage offers him a sense of protection in case Jewish settlers harass him or clashes with Israeli police erupt again outside his door. This piece of paper proves my father bought this land from a Palestinian in 1966, Rajabi said, waving an Arabic document from the Jordanian authorities who controlled east Jerusalem until 1967, when Israel seized it in the Six Day War.
Kelly Kunzl
Mazen Dweik had been warned multiple times by members of the Israeli settler organization Ateret Cohanim.
If he refused to sell his house in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Batan al-Hawa to the settlers, they would make sure he and his family lost everything in court.
Last month, that threat became a reality when a Jerusalem district court upheld a ruling in favor of the far-right group to evict all 30 members – including 12 children – of the Dweik residence.
Judges rejected the final appeal made by the family in February against a ruling relinquishing full property rights to Ateret Cohanim and ending a more than decade-long legal battle.