The battle for Silwan: Palestinian families face demolition and eviction in Jerusalem

Must ReadInside the West Bank

In Silwan, a Palestinian neighbourhood in Israeli-controlled East Jerusalem, residents face mounting pressure as municipal authorities ramp up home demolitions and settler organisations pursue evictions.

This article is the first in a six-part series exploring the realities of life inside the West Bank, from a reporting trip carried out by Eimer McAuley, news correspondent with The Journal, in the week between Ireland’s two football matches with Israel. 

KUTYABAH ODEH PULLS up a map on his phone. Across the streets of Silwan, East Jerusalem, he has drawn little red dots. 

“These are buildings and houses that have been demolished since 7 October,” he says.

We are standing in an empty children’s park in Al-Bustan, a neighbourhood with around 1,500 residents, where a large portion of the buildings have been slated for demolition by the local authority. 

Around 50,000 Palestinians live in Silwan, a neighbourhood just outside the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City. Its proximity to the city’s major religious sites, and the contested history of the land, have made it one of the most disputed areas of occupied East Jerusalem.

kutyabah Odeh, social worker and community leader in Al-Bustan, Silwan.

Displacement here takes different forms. Some families receive demolition orders from Israeli authorities over buildings deemed to lack permits, which Palestinians say are extremely difficult to obtain. 

In Al-Bustan, the Jerusalem municipality has plans for a new tourist attraction in the form of a biblical park called the ‘King’s Garden’, a project that directly threatens Palestinian homes in the neighbourhood. 

Odeh gestures over the park’s wall to a pile of rubble that has twisted metal wires protruding from it: 

“This was our social centre. I helped to run it. Children did activities here, old people met to catch up. When they bulldozed this, it was a message to all of us in Silwan: ‘We will destroy the places where you are’.”

The 32-year-old speaks with an intensity that shifts between anger and disbelief, at times he lets out an embittered laugh.

“I was a child when my family was given a demolition order, and I still remember what number we were, house number 63 – that’s how we were spoken to, by our number,” he says. 

Odeh was arrested aged 13 amid clashes that broke out at the time as locals attempted to resist the demolition of their homes. He’s devoted much of his life to that cause – but it’s become increasingly difficult to do so in the last three years. 

“Demolitions always happened from time to time, but since 7 October, they have rapidly carried out more of them.

“We are paying the price for being Palestinians after 7 October,” he says. 

A young man stands in front of his home which was recently demolished by Israeli authorities in Al-Bustan, Silwan.

Behind Odeh, the neighbourhood known as Batn al-Hawa is visible on the crowded hillside that stretches towards the walls of the Old City. 

“In Batn al-Hawa, displacement happens through the courts,” Odeh says. “The story isn’t one of demolition there. It is one of evacuation, once the Palestinians leave their homes, settlers move in.”

The Israeli settler organisation Ateret Cohanim has pursued legal claims to properties in the area, arguing that some belonged to a Jewish community of Yemeni origin before 1948. Israeli courts have upheld some of these claims, resulting in Palestinian families being ordered to leave their homes. 

Under a 1970 Israeli law, Jews can seek to reclaim certain property in East Jerusalem owned in their family before 1948. Palestinians have no equivalent right to reclaim property they lost in what is now Israel. 

Families who bought or leased land in Batin al-Hawa and built homes there over decades have been embroiled in a lengthy legal battle since 2015, when Ateret Cohanim issued eviction orders to a number of households.

In March 2026, Israeli forces forcibly evicted 15 Palestinian households from Batn al-Hawa, displacing 70 people, including children, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

More than 30 families had been displaced through eviction proceedings, including 17 since the start of the year.

Odeh’s own family has lost two homes in the area, while several families have had legal cases dragged on through the courts.

“Imagine this: our family is evacuated, we have three court cases, three attorneys. We know we will lose. What will be the psychological impact on our family?

“But still we are here, and we are smiling. We have no alternative,” Odeh says. 

The area Kutyabah is standing in used to be where a residential unit stood that his brother's family lived in.

As Odeh leads a tour through Al-Bustan’s narrow alleyways, he says it’s a good chance to document what’s there.

“Maybe next time you come, all of these buildings will be gone,” he says. “They are asking us to demolish our homes with our own hands now, otherwise you have to pay a fee to the municipality for an enforced demolition.” 

He stops at a building owned by his family. One adjoining unit has already been demolished and cleared. 

“We have another court date actually to fight this, and we know we will lose, but we still go because it feels important to record what’s happening,” he says. 

The planned biblical park and Ateret Cohanim’s land claims are not the only pressures facing Palestinians in the area. Local representatives also warn that the Jerusalem Cable Car project, approved by the Israeli government in 2019, could lead to further demolitions in the name of tourism.

Construction has been stalled, but impacted residents remain caught up in lengthy legal proceedings as they fight to stay in their homes.

On a street where several buildings have been reduced to piles of rubble, Odeh stops and remarks that it “looks like Gaza now”. 

“While the whole world is looking towards Gaza, here they are executing the plan they have for Jerusalem and intensifying the plan for Silwan. Different bodies are involved in displacing us through different mechanisms, but the aim is the same, to get rid of us,” he adds. 

Under the threat of further displacement, Odeh says, residents are watching the Israeli elections closely. Many fear that if the current government coalition remains in power, existing demolition and eviction orders will continue to be enforced.

Their concerns were underscored when Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right national security minister, attended the demolition of Palestinian buildings in Al-Tur, another neighbourhood a few kilometres away, just days after our meeting.

In the new social centre for Al-Bustan, which is still being set up, Odeh speaks about the international connections the neighbourhood is working to maintain, so people here do not feel they are on their own. 

He says the pressure of looming displacement is immense in the face of Jerusalem’s high rents and a lack of any real alternative. 

“Imagine you have a family and you are living here,” he says.

“You yourself, you might want to struggle on. But you will begin to think, ‘Is it appropriate to have my children living in this environment?’ You begin to say to yourself, ‘Can I impose this type of life on them?’”