Legalized colonial displacement: Palestinians in Silwan,Jerusalem

Abstract

The paper extends the study of urban displacement by exploring in depth the colonial settings of Palestinians in Silwan, East Jerusalem. The case highlights the legal geography of a multi-communal open city transformed into a space dominated by ethno-national settlement and a 'neo-apartheid' regime. The analysis traces how Jewish organizations reclaim pre-1948 Jewish properties, relying on manipulative interpretation of the Ottoman Land Code, and on Israeli legal, political and financial support. These moves lead to actual and potential displacement of hundreds of native Palestinian families. The detailed research shows how since 2002 Israeli settler organization ‘Ateret Cohanim’ initiated dozens of eviction lawsuits against Palestinian families in Batn al-Hawa, Silwan, reclaiming Jewish property built in the 1880s for poor Jewish Yemenite families, and seemingly instituted then as a pious (Waqf) property. Since many of the Palestinian residents are themselves displaced from other locations, the current colonial push places them under the condition of 'double displacement', with no legal recourse. Hence, the previous urban logic of space has given way to ethno-national and colonial regime, under which Palestinian urban citizenship is marked by its structural displaceability. This appears to be increasingly a common condition of colonized, subaltern and marginalized groups in cities of the global southeast. The analysis points to the need to further study and theorize the logic of displacement in cities outside the global North, with special emphasis on cities embroiled in ethnic and racial conflicts.