Silwan: A Living Example of Ongoing Judaization
Hug me
And hold me tight
Or devour me
To suffer no more.
I love thee
so take me.
Make me rich.
Make me dirt.
Gone are the days of serenity.
Guns are the words of humanity.
I have no food but a thorn,
No sport but a sigh.
For a soldier needs to feel high.
O, Earth,
If in life I am to hurt
Let my dirt in you give birth.
O, Earth. – January 16, 2012
O Earth (Land Day Poem) by Refaat Alareer (1979 –2023) who Israel killed on December 6, 2023 in Gaza, along with his sister, brother, and four of his nephews and nieces.
What is Land Day?
On March 30, 1976, Israeli forces killed six Palestinians in the Galilee as they were protesting large scale confiscations. On this day every year, Palestinians and supporters across the globe not only remember those killed but also assert that our roots in this land and our determination to continue steadfast until liberation and return is not conquerable.
The land confiscation formed part of a broader strategy known as the Judaization of the Galilee, a demographic campaign aimed at increasing the Jewish population in Palestinian-majority areas. Land Day this year reflects the continued attempts to uproot Palestinians from their land once again, five decades later, particularly in Gaza, where Israel’s genocide has been ongoing for more than 2 years.
Silwan: A Living Example of Ongoing Judaization
Between March 22 and 25, 2026, Israel has forcibly displaced at least 15 Palestinian families from Batn al-Hawa neighborhood in Silwan, in occupied East Jerusalem, in the latest episode in the acceleration of Israeli efforts to empty areas surrounding the Old City of Palestinians and replace them with settlers. Israeli forces have sealed off the old city since the start of the attack on Iran and using this to advance the expulsion of Palestinians.
Since the genocide started in 2023, Israel forcibly displaced 28 Palestinian households, which is around 160 people, from Batn al-Hawa.
Through Israeli colonial courts (i.e. the Absentees’ Property Law), Silwan’s lands have been shrinking day by day. The area has now been reduced from 73,000 dunams before the 1967 occupation, stretching all the way to the Khan al-Ahmar area between Jerusalem and Jericho, to around 6,000 dunams. Most of the land was confiscated to establish the Ma’ale Adumim settlement.
Settler organizations (i.e. Elad and Ateret Cohanim) have filed lawsuits in Israeli courts, placing more than 200 Palestinian families, around 900 people in East Jerusalem, at risk of forced displacement and imminent eviction.
Forced displacement in the occupied West Bank
A report released by the UN on March 17 indicates that between October 2024 and 2025, Israel has forcibly displaced 36,000 Palestinians from the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. The displacement occurs through military raids, escalating settler militias violence, home demolitions, land confiscations, as well as legal and administrative measures.
What happens in the occupied West Bank under the fog of the war against Iran?
In 2025, settler violence forcibly displaced an average 138 Palestinians per month. In 2026, that jumped to 600. By mid-March 2026, the number of Palestinians displaced in just 11 weeks had already reached 95% of the entire total in 2025.
This is the time to rise collectively and urgently like never before. For the end of the genocide in Gaza, against the normalization of apartheid and ethnic cleansing. Let’s normalize and build BDS!
To uphold human rights and defend humanity everywhere against the supremacist and colonial attempts, led by the US-Israeli axis, to impose a world where might makes right. Let’s send impunity!
Until liberation and return.