page_title: Silwan
section_title: British Mandate
hierarchical_section_title: Silwan / History / British Mandate
caption_attribution_description: A view of Silwan from Abu Tur, looking towards the Separation Wall near the Old City of Jerusalem.
context_page_description: Silwan is a predominantly Palestinian neighborhood on the outskirts of the Old City of Jerusalem. Forty Jewish families also live in the area. Silwan is located in East Jerusalem.
  Silwan began as a farming village, dating back to the 7th century according to local traditions, while the earliest mention of the village is from the year 985. From the 19th century onwards, the village was slowly being incorporated into Jerusalem until it became an urban neighborhood.
  After the 1948 war, the village came under Jordanian rule. Jordanian rule lasted until the 1967 Six-Day War, since which it has been occupied by Israel. Silwan is administered as part of the Jerusalem Municipality.
  In 1980, Israel incorporated East Jerusalem into its claimed capital city Jerusalem through the Jerusalem Law, a basic law in Israel. The move is considered by the international community as illegal under international law, but the Israeli government disputes this.
context_section_description: At the time of the 1922 census of Palestine, "Selwan (Kfar Hashiloah)" had a population of 1,901 persons; 1,699 Muslims, 153 Jews and 49 Christians, where the Christians were 16 Roman Catholics and 33 Syrian Catholics.  In the same year, Baron Edmond de Rothschild bought several acres of land there and transferred it to the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association. By the time of the 1931 census, Silwan had 630 occupied houses and a population of 2968; 2,553 Muslims, 124 Jews and 91 Christians (the last including the Latin, Greek and St. Stephens convents).
  In the 1936–39 Arab revolt in Palestine, the Yemenite community was removed from Silwan by the Welfare Bureau of the Va'ad Leumi into the Jewish Quarter as security conditions for Jews worsened, and in 1938, the remaining Yemenite Jews in Silwan were evacuated by the Jewish Community Council on the advice of the police. According to documents in the custodian office and real estate and project advancement expert Edmund Levy, the homes of the Yemenite Jews were occupied by Arab families without registering ownership.
  The British Mandatory government began annexing parts of Silwan to the Jerusalem Municipality, a process completed by the final Jordanian annexation of remaining Silwan in 1952.
  In the twentieth century, Silwan grew northward towards Jerusalem, expanding from a small farming village into an urban neighborhood. Modern Arab Silwan encompasses Old Silwan (generally to the south), the Yemenite village (to the north), and the once-vacant land between. Today Silwan follows the ridge of the southern peak of the Mount of Olives to the east of the Kidron Valley, from the ridge west of the Ophel up to the southern wall of the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif.
  In the 1945 statistics  the population of Silwan was 3,820; 3,680  Muslims and 140 Christians,  with a total of  5,421 dunams of land according to an official land and population survey.  Of this, Arabs used  58 dunams were for plantations and irrigable land and 2,498 for cereals, while Jews used 51 for cereals.  A total of 172 dunams were classified as built-up (urban) land.
caption: Silwan from Abu Tor, looking towards the Israeli West Bank barrier near the Old City
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