Rights group says Israel ‘expanding ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem, throwing Palestinian families into the streets’.

About a dozen Palestinian families have been pushed out of their homes in occupied East Jerusalem, as human rights groups warn that Israel is intensifying a wave of forced displacement across the area.

Israeli human rights group B’Tselem said on Wednesday that at least 11 Palestinian families were forced out of their homes in the Batn al-Hawa area of Silwan, just south of Jerusalem’s Old City and the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.

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

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

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), a humanitarian group, said the homes are expected to be transferred to the Israeli settler organisation Ateret Cohanim. “Over 1,000 more Palestinians in East Jerusalem are at risk of forced eviction,” the group wrote on X.

Palestinians across the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, have faced a wave of soaring Israeli settler and 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 troops in the West Bank between the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023 and the end of January of this year, according to United Nations figures.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians have also been displaced across the West Bank since the war on Gaza began.

Silwan, which sits just outside Jerusalem’s Old City walls, has faced years of pressure from the Israeli authorities and groups pushing to expand illegal Israeli settlements in the heart of the neighbourhood.

More than 200 families vulnerable

In early January, Israel’s Supreme Court rejected a final appeal from more than two dozen Palestinian families in Batn al-Hawa, challenging their looming eviction.

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

“The eviction cases are based on a discriminatory Israeli law enacted in 1970, which grants Jews exclusive rights to reclaim property allegedly owned prior to 1948, while denying Palestinians the same right,” the organisation said in a statement on January 2.

B’Tselem said on Wednesday that approximately 90 families – totalling 700 people – in Batn al-Hawa face “an imminent threat of forced displacement” alongside another 1,500 people from 150 families in Silwan’s al-Bustan area.

“This is the reality of systematic, institutionalized violence and a clear manifestation of an Israeli policy aimed at engineering the demographic balance and ‘Judaizing’ the neighborhood by exploiting 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 in the region, serving as a crucial component of the broader ethnic cleansing currently unfolding across the West Bank.”