Jewish Property Acquisition
In the 1980s, some properties in Silwan were declared absentee property. The suspicion arose that a number of claims filed by Jewish organizations were accepted by the Custodian without any site visits or follow-up. Property in Silwan has been purchased by Jews through indirect sales, some by invoking the Absentee Property Law. In other cases, the Jewish National Fund signed protected tenant agreements that enabled construction to proceed without a tender process.
In December 2011, a board member of the Jewish National Fund's US fundraising arm resigned in protest after a 20-year legal process came to a head with an order for the eviction of a Palestinian family from a JNF-owned home. The home had been acquired via the Absentee Property Law. Several days before the order was carried out, JNF announced it would be delayed.
As of 2004, more than 50 Jewish families live in the area, some in homes acquired from Arabs who claim they did not know they were selling their homes to Jews, some in Beit Yehonatan.
Rabbis for Human Rights accused Elad of creating a "method of expelling citizens from their properties, appropriating public areas, enclosing these lands with fences and guards, and banning the entrance of the local residents...under the protection of a private security force."
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