Palestinian residents of Silwan are on edge after authorities evicted two families from their homes in the East Jerusalem neighborhood at the start of the week — the latest development in a charged, decades-long legal battle over the neighborhood.

Early Sunday morning, large police and Border Police forces closed off the neighborhood’s Batn al-Hawa area and booted the Shweiki and Odeh families from their homes of several decades, following an eviction order issued by the Jerusalem District Court. Jewish families swiftly moved in.

Zuheir Rajabi, a neighbor of the Shweiki family who witnessed the eviction from his balcony overlooking their house, said officers closed roads leading in and out of the neighborhood and forbade residents to leave their homes.

The evicted families, 14 people in total, were caught off guard by police’s arrival, believing they had until Wednesday to pack up and leave, as set out in the court order. They were the first to be evicted from Silwan since December 2024.

Police told residents that they had asked the court to move up the eviction date to Sunday, and were granted their request, Rajabi said. They declined to notify the families ahead of time. Police did not respond for a request for comment on those claims.

“They come to the mother, a 72-year-old, and tell her that she has one hour to take her stuff and leave. To where will she leave?” Rajabi said of the family’s matriarch, Asmahan Shweiki. “She collapsed, the poor thing. She fell down and an ambulance had to come to pick her up.”

לכל מי שמברך על ההישג של עטרת כהנים, קחו, כדי שהשמחה שלכם תהיה שלמה ומלאה. pic.twitter.com/doqkwqVXdv

— نير حسون Nir Hasson ניר חסון (@nirhasson) November 9, 2025

The woman’s three children arrived at her home in order to console her, but police beat them, removed them from the area and arrested her grandson, Muhammad Shweiki, Rajabi claimed.

Jewish families moved into the emptied houses the same morning, he said, and soon hoisted Israeli flags from the roofs. Over the past couple of days, the new residents have been installing security cameras on the........

© The Times of Israel