On June 15, 2026, Jerusalem Municipality employees raided a plot of land located along Wadi Rababa in Silwan belonging to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate.1 Israeli authorities forcibly removed the church-appointed custodian, Khaled al-Zeer, confiscated his equipment, uprooted trees, and sealed off the property.2 The site adjoins ancient caves with religious and archeological significance.

Since then, human rights organizations say that Israeli officials have used a number of different tools to strip the property of its church ownership and build on it, linking the land to a series of Israeli settlements surrounding Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy sites.

On June 17, the Patriarchate issued a press statement on the matter, which read, in part:

In response to the seizure of its land, the Patriarchate filed a lawsuit against the Jerusalem Municipality at the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court to stop the ongoing work and receive compensation for damages. A hearing was held on June 18, 2026, during which the Israeli-run municipality argued it confiscated the land under a so-called gardening order, issued in January 2025, allowing it to take over property for landscaping needs. The Patriarchate says that they were not aware of this gardening order.4 The municipality also said that the municipality bylaw, “Maintaining Order and Cleanliness,” authorizes it to remove obstacles from the street.5

The judge rejected the Patriarchate’s request for an injunction and instructed the church’s lawyer to appeal to the municipal affairs court, which oversees building and planning laws.

Municipal gardening orders have been used as a way to confiscate Palestinian land across Silwan. For instance, the Jerusalem Municipality distributed 28 gardening orders to 200 dunams of Palestinian property in Wadi Rababa in 2018. Following a court ruling, the municipality granted the Elad settler organization full control over the land.6

More recently, gardening orders have been issued throughout the al-Bustan area of Silwan to seize privately owned Palestinian land and demolish the property for gardening purposes.

“One of the major mechanisms by which this takeover occurred [in Silwan, which has numerous Israeli settlement sites] was the widespread abuse of Gardening Orders, which were used to consolidate settler hegemony rather than to address genuine gardening issues,” Terrestrial Jerusalem, an Israeli organization monitoring Jerusalem’s geopolitical developments, wrote in a statement.7

According to to Terrestrial Jerusalem, the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate’s plot is actually undergoing Settlement of Land Title (SOLT) procedures, which the church only learned of during court proceedings.8 SOLT is the process of verifying ownership rights of a given piece of land. Israel froze SOLT when it occupied East Jerusalem in 1967 and restarted it in 2018 under Government Decision 3790, a five-year plan ostensibly intended to “reduce socioeconomic gaps and advance economic development in East Jerusalem.” However, rights groups have found that Israel is exploiting SOLT to dispossess Palestinians of their property and seize more land for Jewish settlement (see The Settlement of Land Title (SOLT): The Most Acute Threat Facing Palestinian Residents of Jerusalem Today”).

While the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate claims ownership of the property, the Jerusalem Municipality doesn’t recognize its ownership. As SOLT proceedings are underway, the Church found that a third party, who has helped Elad seize land from Palestinians, submitted a request to be recognized as an owner of the land.9

“The individual claiming title to the property . . . is a Palestinian who has collaborated with the settlers in the past, giving suspicious and contested testimony geared to allow the settlers to take over properties from Palestinian owners,” Terrestrial Jerusalem wrote.10

Concerns are growing that the confiscated church land will be turned over to settler groups like Elad and Ateret Cohanim (see Settler State: Guide to the Israeli Settler Groups That Work to Dispossess Palestinians in Jerusalem).

“There is an increasing likelihood that this seizure will be integrated into broader plans linked to the ‘City of David’ and ‘King’s Garden’ settlement project administered by entities affiliated with the Elad organization,” Balasan Initiative for Human Rights (BIHR), a Bethlehem-based Palestinian NGO, wrote in its appeal to the United Nations on Israel’s illegal seizure of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate land (see Silwan: The Bleeding Wound).11

Expanding on the organization’s fears regarding the confiscation, Dalia Qumsieh, founder and director of BIHR, told Jerusalem Story:

As explained in Terrestrial Jerusalem’s analysis of the events, the church’s plot is located in an area where the Israeli government and the Jerusalem Municipality—specifically under the Jerusalem Development Authority, a joint state and municipal agency—are developing a plan to encircle the Old City with settler projects. Thus far, Israel has spent more than NIS 1 billion ($330 million) on the endeavor and allocated a budget of NIS 50 million ($16 million) for 2026.13

“The plot in question is located at the confluence of the Ben Hinnom Ravine/Wadi Rababa and the Kidron Valley /Wadi Na‘ar,” Terrestrial Jerusalem wrote. “[T]his junction is of strategic importance to the Elad settler organization, which seeks to dominate a contiguous ring that begins in Abu Tor and includes the Ben Hinnom Regime, the Kidron Valley, and the Kings' Gardens (al-Bustan), which are finally linked to the Jewish Cemetery on the Mount of Olives.”

Nearly the whole area of Wadi Rababa is under the control of Elad settlers, who are developing it and its surroundings to fit Elad’s ideological goals. Elad established a “biblical farm” tourist attraction in the valley, was involved in building a pedestrian bridge that hangs over Wadi Rababa (see Israel’s Disneyfication of Jerusalem Seeks to Erase Palestinians’ Historic Presence) and is now restoring the Sambuski cemetery above Wadi Rababa. The government project to construct a cable car over Wadi Rababa would end at Elad’s headquarters in the Old City.14

“For more than a decade, the Government of Israel has been discreetly backing the settlers of East Jerusalem in a plan to etch into the landscape physical embodiments of their biblically driven ideology,” Terrestrial Jerusalem wrote.15 “The Government and these settlers seek to transform Israel into the direct continuation of Ancient Israel, focusing their efforts on the religious, historical, and cultural core of Jerusalem: the Old City and the valleys surrounding it.”

But Israel’s confiscation of the Church’s land isn’t just about increasing settlements and settler takeovers in Wadi Rababa. The issue is also related to intensifying attacks against Christians and their holy sites in East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank.

“In a context of alarmingly declining Palestinian Christian presence, targeting Church-owned property cannot be reduced to a mere property dispute; rather, it represents an attack on the community and institutions that have preserved Christian presence in Palestine,” Qumsieh told Jerusalem Story.

Hate crimes against Christians have been rising in recent years, with both the Jerusalem-based Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue and the Religious Freedom Data Center recording higher numbers of assaults on Christians and church properties in the last year, specifically in Jerusalem (see Bigoted Harassment of Christians in Jerusalem Increased in 2025).

For Qumsieh, the attacks on Christian and takeover of property go hand in hand with transforming the character of Jerusalem.

“The seizure of Church property in an area already targeted by Israeli unlawful annexation and displacement policies is very indicative of the plan: Jerusalem’s religious and historic sites and areas are increasingly subjected to exclusive Israeli control,” Qumsieh said. “One that seeks to deliberately change the very nature and centrality of a multi-faith Jerusalem, making it exclusively Jewish.”