Ben Gvir storms Silwan coinciding with final decision to displace 12 Palestinian families

Field sources reported that the Minister of National Security of the occupation, Itamar Ben Gvir, stormed the town of Batan al-Hawa in the Silwan area of occupied Jerusalem, where he conducted a provocative tour, showcasing recently seized homes alongside settlers. This step comes amidst an intense settlement escalation aimed at changing the demographics in the holy neighborhoods surrounding the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque.

The storming coincided with the occupation's Supreme Court issuing a final ruling rejecting the appeal application submitted by dozens of individuals from the Sarhan family in the same neighborhood. This decision gives the green light for the eviction of 12 Palestinian families from their homes in favor of the 'Ateret Cohanim' settlement association, placing dozens of Jerusalemites at risk of actual displacement in the coming months.

The roots of the Sarhan family's case in the Batan al-Hawa neighborhood date back more than six decades, when the head of the family built four homes on land he legally purchased, which has been inherited by generations. However, the judicial process, which began in 2015, witnessed dramatic shifts, starting with the Magistrate's Court decision in December 2025, which claimed the land belonged to an ancient Jewish endowment, leading to the Supreme Court's decision in June 2026, which definitively settled the case without a hearing.

This case reveals the double standards in the occupation's judicial system, where settlers rely on the Legal and Administrative Arrangements Law of 1970, which exclusively allows Jews to reclaim properties they lost in 1948. In contrast, Palestinians are completely denied the right to reclaim their properties within the occupied territories under the Absentee Property Law of 1950, making these laws a legislative tool to serve settlement expansion and forced displacement.

For their part, legal and human rights bodies affirmed that stopping displacement operations in Silwan requires a political decision, as the occupation government has legal options to halt evictions, including expropriating the land for public benefit and compensating settlers, or directing the police to refrain from enforcement for security reasons. Approximately 700 Jerusalemites in the Batan al-Hawa neighborhood face an unknown fate amidst the insistence of settlement associations to empty the neighborhood of its original inhabitants.

The issue is primarily political, not purely legal, and the occupation government has the authority to stop these measures through alternative options.