Reports:
Israeli settlers, escorted by the Israeli occupation forces, occupied 25 houses in the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan south of the Old City of Jerusalem on Tuesday, residents and Palestinian leaders as well as a local information center said.
The incident led to clashes between Palestinian residents and Zionist settlers in the Silwan neighborhood, which is right outside Jerusalem’s Old City and near the flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound.
It came after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas traded inflammatory accusations at the UN General Assembly in New York, making the prospects of peace look even bleaker.
Mohammed al-Khayat, whose family owns three apartments in one Silwan building, told AFP settlers had broken the locks on empty properties and then changed them.
Wadi Hilweh Information Center said in a statement that “settlers of the Elad (Ir David) Association” stormed Silwan at 1:30 am escorted by Israeli soldiers and forcibly evicted the residents of an apartment and occupied it, in addition to several vacant homes.
According to Ma’an News Agency, the houses belong to the Baydoun, al-Karaki, Abu Sbeih, al-Zawahra, al-Abbasi, al-Khayyat, Qarain and al-Yamani families, the statement said.
The Wadi Hilweh Center called the act an “unprecedented settlement attack.”
“Even if the houses have been bought stealthily, this is still an illegal seizure of Arab houses by the Elad settlement association.”
Elad, a hardline settler organization that seeks to increase Zionist settlement in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, told AFP that a company called Kendall Finance had purchased the properties.
But Mohammed Dahla, a lawyer representing the Palestinian owners, said they denied selling them.
A spokesman for Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, quoted by news agency Wafa, slammed “the occupation by settlers of buildings in Silwan close to the Al-Aqsa mosque.”
Silwan, an Palestinian neighborhood were a few hundred hardcore settlers live, is often the scene of violence between the two sides, or between young Palestinians and police.
East Jerusalem is internationally recognized as Palestinian territory, but Israel occupied it in 1967 and later annexed it in a move never considered legitimate abroad.
More than 500,000 Israeli settlers live in settlements across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, in contravention of international law.
Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat blamed Netanyahu for encouraging illegal Israeli settlement in Palestinian areas.
“They (settlers) translated Netanyahu’s speech into the act of taking over seven buildings in occupied east Jerusalem,” he told AFP.
That was a reference to Netanyahu telling the General Assembly Monday that settlers were “not occupiers in the Land of Israel,” invoking a “singular attachment to this land for over 3,000 years.”
The settlement issue has derailed round after round of peace talks, most recently in April.
Netanyahu also accused Abbas of slander over claims Friday that Israel had waged a “war of genocide” in its 50-day summer military campaign against militants in the Gaza Strip, which killed nearly 2,200 Palestinians, mostly civilians.