HRW: Israel escalating home demolitions, evictions in East Jerusalem

Israeli authorities are accelerating home demolitions and forced evictions of Palestinian residents in the Silwan district of occupied East Jerusalem, Human Rights Watch said today. The organisation said the forcible deportation or transfer of the population of an occupied territory within or outside the territory, unless justified on a temporary basis for the protection of the population itself or imperative military reasons, is a violation of international humanitarian law and amounts to a war crime.  Silwan lies south of Jerusalem’s Old City. Among its 12 neighbourhoods, al-Bustan and Batn al-Hawa have for decades been the primary focus of eviction and demolition campaigns led by Israeli authorities and settler organisations such as Ateret Cohanim. These campaigns intensified under cover of the hostilities in Gaza and, this year, […]