Masked Terrorists Set Fire to Home Won in Court by Ateret Cohanim

Photo Credit: Jamal Awad/Flash90

The eastern Jerusalem neighborhood of Hashiloach (Silwan), October 18, 2024.

A house in the Batn al-Hawa neighborhood in Kfar Hashiloach (Silwan) in eastern Jerusalem, which was going to be transferred to the right-wing Ateret Cohanim association after a long legal battle, was set on fire by masked men overnight Tuesday, Haaretz reported. There were no injuries.

According to the report, citing a neighbor, eight members of the Jit family who lived in the house removed their property shortly before midnight so that it would not be confiscated by the enforcement agency. And then, surprise, surprise, masked men arrived, and set the building on fire.

It burned down completely.

The neighbor believed the arsonists had been enraged that the Jit family was vacating the house voluntarily.

No doubt.

The Ateret Cohanim Association is an Israeli organization working since the 1970s to settle Jews in the Old City and eastern Jerusalem, where currently Jews are a minority.

Starting in the early 2000s, Ateret Cohanim began purchasing land in eastern Jerusalem neighborhoods outside the Old City. At the association’s initiative, Jewish neighborhoods were established in Kidmat Zion in the Abu Dis neighborhood, and near the tomb of Shimon the Hatzadik in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. The purchase from Arabs is done secretly, due to the PA policy against selling land to Jews, under which the life of the Arab seller of land to Jews is in danger. About 80 families live in the association’s buildings in the Old City.

The fight over the building was recently decided after a years-long legal battle with Ateret Cohanim. The basis for all the association’s claims is the same: The Judicial and Administrative Arrangements Law, enacted in 1970 by the Knesset, stipulated that Jews who owned property in eastern Jerusalem and lost their properties to the invading Jordanian army in 1948 could receive them back from the Israeli General Custodian. Meanwhile, the Absentee Property Law of 1950 stipulates that PA Arabs who lost their properties in Israel in 1948 and became refugees would not be entitled to receive them back. As a result, the land retrieval law in practice only applied to Jews and not to PA Arabs.