the residents could be declared “absentee” within the meaning of the law. After the property was declared absentee property, which placed it under the control of the government, the Custodian would transfer the property to the Jerusalem Development Authority. The 2013 UN Human Rights Council report also concluded that the confiscation of lands in Silwan as a way to transfer Jewish-Israeli colonizers into the occupied territory is “an explicit but undeclared Israeli policy involving senior figures in various government ministries, the Finance Ministry (the Custodian of Absentee Property), the Housing Ministry, the Israel Land Administration, the JNF, government companies, security forces, and the Jerusalem Municipality.”184 Fraudulent Purchases of Palestinian Property After the release of the incriminating Klugman Report, it became more prevalent for colonizers to dubiously purchase coveted lands or properties. This mechanism often involves violent home invasions, coercive acquisition of the Palestinian landowners’ fingerprints or signatures, the kidnapping of the landowner, the use of corrupt land brokers, and forgery.185 Despite rampant instances of fraudulent land purchases, the government continues to facilitate and endorse the illegal and often violent occupation of Palestinian homes by colonizers by providing them with the protection of security forces and police.186 Colonizer organizations have intensified these tactics to further dispossess Palestinians, relying on their special relationship with the Israeli government, which provides them with almost blanket impunity. The onerous burden of proof of land or property ownership is placed on the Palestinians rather than on the colonizer organization,187 and Palestinians rarely receive justice from challenging the tactics of colonizers or colonizer organizations in Israeli courts.188 184 Id., 15. 185 Mohammad Elyas Nazzal, “Land and Property Leaking in the West Bank" 2016, 140-160. ‫الغربية‬‭ ‬‫الضفة‬‭ ‬‫في‬‭ ‬‫والعقارات‬‭ ‬‫االراضي‬‭ ‬‫تسريب‬‭‬‬ 186 Id., 16. 187 Id., 18. 188 Even in cases such as the Abbasi house in Silwan, where the Jerusalem District Judge concluded that the lands were confiscated as “absentee property” in an “extreme lack of good faith” with “no factual or legal basis”, the land remained confiscated and colonizers from El’Ad continued to live on it. See Ahdaf Soueif, “The dig dividing Jerusalem,” The Guardian, 10 May 2010, available at: https://www. theguardian.com/world/2010/may/26/jerusalem-city-of-david-palestinians-archaeology [accessed 22 September 2017]. 66