Palestinian families displaced in East Jerusalem

Hundreds of Palestinian families in East Jerusalem are being displaced from their homes to make way for Israeli settlers.

The Absentees’ Property Law, which was passed by the Knesset in March 1950, was created to address property “left behind” during the 1948 war. Years later, the government and settler groups began using it to move Palestinian families out of their homes in East Jerusalem, and to move Israeli settlers in.

The law defined an “absentee” so broadly that many Palestinians lost ownership of their homes even though they had never left the territory that became Israel. Some had simply fled to another town during the war. Others were displaced only a few kilometres away. Many became known as “present absentees”, because they were physically present in the country but legally treated as if they had disappeared.

Once a home is declared “absentee property”, it falls to a government official, called the Custodian, who is put in charge of such property. The law is framed in such a way as to appear [as if the Custodian is] looking after abandoned property, but in reality, it is used to transfer ownership of homes for good. Palestinian owners can’t get them back.

Annexed

Israel first annexed East Jerusalem in 1967 and made it part of the city. At first, the government decided not to apply the Absentees’ Property Law there. After 1977, the government started to enforce the law more and more. In the 1980s, it was used in areas like Silwan and the Old City. Settler organisations would identify property whose Palestinian owners were believed to be “absent” from East Jerusalem on the date Israel annexed the city, and the Custodian would then transfer them to Israeli settlers.

A newer law, from 1970, lets Jewish families take back property they owned in East Jerusalem before 1948. Palestinians do not get the same right — they cannot take back homes they lost in West Jerusalem.

How a home is taken, step by step:

1. A settler group signs a paper that says the owner of a home is “absent”.

2. The Custodian agrees the home is “absentee property”. Often, no-one checks if this is really true.

3. The home is given to a government body, the Development Authority.

4. It is passed to the Jewish National Fund, or its company Himnuta. Their goal is to keep land for Jews only.

5. The home is given to a settler group. The Palestinian family is told to leave.

The Jewish National Fund (JNF), often through its subsidiary company Himnuta, has played a central role in acquiring Palestinian property in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and running campaigns to evict Palestinians to make way for settlers.

The Development Authority and Israel Land Administration are legally required to manage assets without ethnic discrimination, but the JNF and Himnuta operate under a JNF policy that their assets be leased or transferred to Jews only. This is their loophole.

In 1987, the government defined the Sumarin family home [in Silwan] as “absentee property”. The reason given was that the registered owner was absent, but the owner had lived in Silwan until his death in 1983. No basic check of the residents’ registry was ever made. The home was passed to Himnuta in 1991. The written goal was to put it into “Jewish ownership”. It was then linked to a settler group called Elad. The family went to court for 32 years. In 2023, the Supreme Court blocked the eviction and ordered Himnuta to pay their legal costs. The court found that the property had been declared absentee without any legal basis. This kind of win is incredibly rare.

A settler group, Ateret Cohanim, currently has cases against more than 90 families, over 450 people, including about 200 children, in Silwan and Batn al-Hawa. Another settler group, Nahalat Shimon, is trying to remove families in Sheikh Jarrah. In 2021 and 2024, the Supreme Court stopped some evictions while the land question was being “checked”. In June 2025, 150 people in Umm Tuba were told the land had been transferred to the JNF.

More than 240 Palestinian families across East Jerusalem are facing eviction, putting more than 1,000 people, including over 460 children, at risk of losing their homes. In neighbourhoods such as Silwan, Batn al-Hawa, and Sheikh Jarrah, hundreds of people remain at risk through legal claims brought by settler organisations.

These cases are often presented as isolated property disputes. But together they reveal a broader policy. Over decades, governments, public institutions, and settler organisations have created a mechanism to put Israeli Jews into homes Palestinians had been living in for generations, displacing thousands of families in the process.