The dome of Al Aqsa Mosque glowed under the autumn afternoon sun as Zuheir al Rajabi gazed from his balcony toward the skyline of Jerusalem’s Old City. Outside, Christian pilgrims stepped off buses, while groups of Orthodox Jewish worshippers gathered at the entrance to the Western Wall.
Today, new flags fly just a few metres from al Rajabi’s home. Blue and white banners bearing the Star of David mark spots from which Israeli police recently expelled Palestinian residents. After more than two decades of activism, al Rajabi knows his days in Batan al Hawa, the Palestinian neighbourhood less than a mile south of the Old City, are now numbered.
The 55 year old said: “Yes, I have lost. I have been defeated. I am not only waiting for my home to be taken, but for all the homes here”.
Al Rajabi has lived his entire life in Batan al Hawa. His home is a spacious four storey house built on land purchased by his grandfather in 1965. His brothers, mother, and many children live across the different floors. Two of his relatives suffer from severe disabilities, and all will be forced to leave if the Israeli courts reject al Rajabi’s final legal appeal, as every resident of Batan al Hawa expects.
He said: “We know the nature of the decision… but we will resist regardless. I believe that within one month, all of us, numbering 52 people, will have to find another place to live”.
Batan al Hawa has long been a target of Israeli right wing organisations seeking to expand Israeli control over parts of Jerusalem seized after Jordan’s defeat in the 1967 war.
One such organisation is Ateret Cohanim, which describes itself as “the leading organisation for reclaiming urban land in Jerusalem”. For more than forty years it has worked to re establish Jewish presence in the heart of the Old City.
The organisation claims that much of Batan al Hawa sits on the site of a village built by a charitable Ottoman era endowment in the late nineteenth century to house impoverished Yemeni Jews. British authorities evacuated this village when tensions between Arabs and Jews escalated in Palestine during the 1930s, promising residents they could return once the situation stabilised, something that never happened.
Lawyers representing the organisation, revived around two decades ago, managed to convince Israeli courts that previous Jewish ownership of properties in Batan al Hawa takes precedence over any later purchases made by current residents, their parents, or their grandparents. A 1970 law grants Jews the right to reclaim property in East Jerusalem.
Some buildings in Batan al Hawa were also obtained through deals with their owners, though the circumstances of these deals remain contested.
Daniel Luria, the spokesperson for Ateret Cohanim, said the organisation, which has housed nearly forty Jewish families in Batan al Hawa, is independent of the endowment but maintains a relationship with it.
Recent months have witnessed a sudden wave of evictions following a series of decisions by Israeli judges.
Ir Amim, a Jerusalem based NGO active in Batan al Hawa, stated that al Rajabi and his family are among 34 families, totalling around 175 people, facing “imminent displacement and the takeover of their homes by settlers”.
Amy Cohen, spokesperson for Ir Amim, said: “If these rulings are implemented, it will result in the largest coordinated expulsion and takeover by the state and settlers of a Palestinian neighbourhood in occupied East Jerusalem since 1967”.
Daniel Luria argues that resisting the removal of Batan al Hawa’s residents, a neighbourhood he calls “Shiloach” in Hebrew, is a final and desperate attempt. He added: “I sympathise with them… but they are illegally occupying properties from which Jews were expelled in the 1930s”.
Al Rajabi believes the Gaza war has played a significant role in the recent surge of evictions. He said: “The war is a major factor. Without the war, maybe we would witness one eviction every ten years, not five in fifteen months. The war created an atmosphere that enables the passage of these measures… an atmosphere of hatred”.
Israel’s ruling coalition, the most right wing government in its history, includes extremist ministers deeply committed to expanding Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem, which Israel unilaterally annexed, as well as in the occupied West Bank.
Palestinians make up about 40 percent of Jerusalem’s nearly one million residents. Maintaining a Jewish majority in the city has been a consistent goal of successive Israeli governments.
In September, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich declared that Israel must annex 82 percent of the occupied West Bank.
Daniel Luria fully supported Smotrich’s proposal, saying: “When the Jews came back in 1948, it did not end there, and it did not end in 1967… the Zionist dream is not complete”.
As for al Rajabi, he does not know where he and his family will go if they are forced out. Three of his four sons are teenagers, and finding a home large enough for all of them will be difficult. Al Rajabi said: “The government and the settlers want to expel us from Jerusalem”.
On the walls of his home hangs a picture of Al Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam. It lies within the Haram al Sharif, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, the holiest site currently accessible for Jewish prayer.
Dareen, al Rajabi’s 15 year old daughter, said the thought of leaving her home saddens her: “Every stone here carries one of my memories. I am very worried that we will be separated as a family and that I will be far from my friends. But I will take my cat with me no matter what happens”.
