Testimony 1 “In Silwan, even if you own your own land, your home, it can still be sold twice without you knowing about it. I don’t trust anyone these days. Not so long ago, I was sitting with some family members and a cousin told us that he wanted to sell his home. He said he showed his ownership document to a man. The moment I heard his name [the buyer] I panicked. I’ve heard about this specific land broker many times and I knew that he sells lands to Israelis and makes fraudulent land purchase contracts. I immediately told my cousin that he would lose his property if he hadn’t lost it already. We didn’t wait; we went directly to the home and took back the ownership documents. Then we went to our lawyer and registered the property as an Islamic waqf [which can be inherited but not sold]. A few days later colonizers came to that same home and tried to claim it. This incident happened in the Silwan neighborhood of Wadi Hilwe in 2015. I think 25 or 27 homes were handed to Israelis in one week. The original owners sold them to a religious Muslim man from 48 [meaning Israel], a man who was really well-known. He bought all of these homes and told the owners that their properties would become an Islamic waqf, but all of these homes were actually sold to El’ad. My home is also in a central neighborhood of Silwan and the whole neighborhood is targeted, all the people here suffer from the same thing. Israel keeps telling us that Palestinians don’t own their properties in this neighborhood. They want all the Palestinians out of here.” Yusra Adnan, housewife from Silwan. Interview: Central neighborhood, Silwan, 22 March 2017 National Parks In addition to the de jure confiscation described above, de facto land confiscation has also been occurring by declaring lands as national parks. In the Wadi Hilwe neighborhood of Silwan, this process began in 1974, with the creation of the Jerusalem Walls National Park. The nearby al-Bustan neighborhood was proclaimed as an ‘open space’ in 1976. This ‘open space’ was later renamed and expanded to become King’s Garden Park. Israel illegally annexed 70,500 dunums [70.5 km2] of land in East Jerusalem in 1967, of which 24,000 [24 km2] were confiscated for ‘public purposes’ such as national parks. East Jerusalem’s status as an occupied territory under international law prohibits the occupying power from confiscating the land - unless for imperative military necessity. Confiscation of occupied 67