GAZA (Palestine Foundation Information Center) Extremist Jewish settlers laid their hands on a Palestinian house in the east Jerusalem district of Silwan, south of the Aqsa Mosque.
Local official Zuhair al-Rajabi told the Wadi Hilweh Information Center on Tuesday that settlers infiltrated into the house of al-Ghaith family in Batn al-Hawa neighborhood in Silwan and seized it.
Last September, the Wadi Hilweh Information Center said that the Israeli higher court dismissed the appeal filed by al-Ghaith family, adopting the decision to evict them in favor of Jewish settlers, claiming that Yemenite Jews owned the land of the house in the past.
Since 2015, members of the family have been fighting a legal battle to protect their two-story house. The family has been living in the house since 1979.
Ateret Cohanim is a government-backed Jewish group and educational institute located in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. It actively works on Judaizing the holy city and expelling its indigenous people, the Jerusalemites, from their homes.
In 2004, Ateret Cohanim embarked on extracting Israeli court decisions that enabled it to seize Palestinian homes and property and displace local families in Silwan and other neighborhoods of the holy city.
Israel’s Judaization activities started in Silwan district and its nearby areas in 1996 when the Jewish neighborhood of Ma’ale Hazeitim emerged as a small settlement on the Mount of Olives in east Jerusalem, inside the Arab neighborhood of Ras al-Amud.
