Jerusalem Offers a Grim Model for a Post-Annexation Future

A general view of a Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan in east Jerusalem, seen on Wednesday, July 1, 2020. (AP)
A general view of a Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan in east Jerusalem, seen on Wednesday, July 1, 2020. (AP)
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Jerusalem Offers a Grim Model for a Post-Annexation Future

A general view of a Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan in east Jerusalem, seen on Wednesday, July 1, 2020. (AP)
A general view of a Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan in east Jerusalem, seen on Wednesday, July 1, 2020. (AP)

It's hard to say what exactly will change in the West Bank if Israel follows through on its plans to annex parts of the occupied territory, but east Jerusalem, which was annexed more than a half-century ago, may provide some answers.

Israeli leaders paint Jerusalem as a model of coexistence, the “unified, eternal” capital of the Jewish people, where minorities have equal rights. But Palestinian residents face widespread discrimination, most lack citizenship and many live in fear of being forced out.

Rights groups say that in some aspects, Palestinians in east Jerusalem have even fewer legal protections than those in the West Bank, where it's possible to appeal to international laws governing the treatment of civilians in occupied territory.

They point to Israel's Absentee Property Law of 1950, which allows the state to take control of any property whose owner lives in an “enemy state” and was used to confiscate the lands and homes of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled or were forced out during the war surrounding Israel's creation in 1948.

Rights groups say that in recent decades, authorities have abused the law to seize homes in sensitive parts of Jerusalem, evicting Palestinian residents and paving the way for settlers to move in.

The Sumarin family has been locked in a 30-year legal battle to prove ownership of their home in Silwan, an east Jerusalem neighborhood coveted by Jewish settlers because of its proximity to holy sites.

When the original owner died in the 1980s, the property was deemed to have an absentee landlord because his four children lived in Jordan. The Israeli branch of the Jewish National Fund then purchased the property from the state in 1991. Last week, a court ordered the family to vacate the property by mid-August and to pay around $5,800 in court fees.

Family members say the original owner left it to his nephew, who was born and raised there, and from whom they are descended. The extended family living in the home, which now includes 15 men, women and children, says it will appeal the decision.

“Who’s absent? We’re right here. I’ve been here for 40 years," said Amal Sumarin, the wife of the nephew's son. “Where are the families with their children supposed to go? Every house built in Silwan is under threat.”

The Israeli branch of the Jewish National Fund, which promotes Jewish settlement in the holy land and is known by its Hebrew acronym KKL, did not respond to Associated Press requests for comment.

Rights groups fear that if annexation takes place, Israel will use the same law to strip Palestinians of privately held land in the West Bank.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to annex all of Israel's settlements and the strategic Jordan Valley in line with President Donald Trump's Middle East plan, which overwhelmingly favors Israel and was rejected by the Palestinians.

It's unclear when or even if Netanyahu will follow through on his pledge, but he has made clear that he wants to annex land but not people, leaving cities, towns and villages under limited Palestinian self-rule. Tens of thousands of acres of privately owned land would likely become part of Israel, potentially leaving the owners “absent” in enclaves outside its new borders.

“It’s not something that we will see the first day of annexation, and it won’t be a big announcement," said Hagit Ofran, an expert on settlement policy at Peace Now, an Israeli rights group opposed to the settlements. "But the potential is that Israel will not only prevent the owners from accessing their land... but also take over their land.”

Palestinians in the annexed territories are unlikely to be offered citizenship, due to Israel's interest in preserving its Jewish majority, and many would refuse it so as not to legitimize Israeli rule. Instead, they are likely to get the same kind of permanent residency held by most Palestinians in east Jerusalem.

That form of residency grants Palestinians access to social services, freedom of movement in Israel and the right to vote in local elections — but not national ones. It can be revoked if Palestinians reside outside the city, as many are tempted to do because of the difficulty of building or expanding homes in east Jerusalem.

Peace Now has found evidence of systematic housing discrimination and says around half of all Palestinian housing units in east Jerusalem have been built without hard-to-get permits, putting them at risk of demolition by Israeli authorities.

The inequities are on vivid display in Silwan, a crowded, run-down Palestinian neighborhood spilling into a valley just outside the walls of the Old City. Its proximity to the bitterly-contested hilltop religious site known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as the Temple Mount has made it a focus for powerful settler organizations who have spent decades acquiring properties there.

Palestinians view the sale of properties to such groups as a betrayal of their national cause, so the transactions are often carried out in secret through Palestinian middlemen, leading to drawn-out legal disputes and in some cases the physical takeover of homes — or parts of homes — by settlers who claim to have bought them.

Jawad Siyam's backyard is divided by a crude wall of corrugated steel. On the other side, a group of settlers live in a building that belonged to his family for decades. The settlers took control last year after a complicated 25-year legal battle that they won, in part by invoking the Absentee Property Law.

The two families don't get along.

Siyam says they shout at each other from their respective terraces. When the settlers held a party recently, Siyam responded to the loud music by dragging his speakers outside and blasting Arab pop.

“He is not a settler that comes to be your neighbor, he comes to take the next house and the next house," Siyam said. “These neighbors are coming to kick you out.”

Daniel Luria, the executive director of Ateret Cohanim, one of the settler organizations that operates in Silwan, says Jews have as much right to live there as in Tel Aviv. For him and other ideological settlers, Jerusalem is the capital of the biblical homeland promised to the Jews, and the settlers are heirs to the “pioneers” who established Israel in the first place.

“The Jews have a right, clearly, as the true sons of Abraham coming back home, to live in any neighborhood," he said. "Especially if an Arab wants to sell, which is the case in 99% of the cases.”

For many Palestinians living in the West Bank, which has been under Israeli military rule for decades, annexation seems like a grim formality. Siyam fears they will be in for a cruel awakening.

“People think it will not change because they talk about the big image," he said. "If you talk about the small image, and details, it will change a lot.”



Iran Leader Khamenei Sees His Inner Circle Hollowed Out by Israel 

Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei looks on, in a televised message following the Israeli strikes in Tehran, Iran, June 13, 2025. Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via Reuters
Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei looks on, in a televised message following the Israeli strikes in Tehran, Iran, June 13, 2025. Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via Reuters
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Iran Leader Khamenei Sees His Inner Circle Hollowed Out by Israel 

Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei looks on, in a televised message following the Israeli strikes in Tehran, Iran, June 13, 2025. Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via Reuters
Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei looks on, in a televised message following the Israeli strikes in Tehran, Iran, June 13, 2025. Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via Reuters

Iran's 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei cuts an increasingly lonely figure.

Khamenei has seen his main military and security advisers killed by Israeli air strikes, leaving major holes in his inner circle and raising the risk of strategic errors, according to five people familiar with his decision-making process.

One of those sources, who regularly attends meetings with Khamenei, described the risk of miscalculation to Iran on issues of defense and internal stability as "extremely dangerous".

Several senior military commanders have been killed since Friday including Khamenei's main advisers from the Revolutionary Guards, Iran's elite military force: the Guards' overall commander Hossein Salami, its aerospace chief Amir Ali Hajizadeh who headed Iran's ballistic missile program and spymaster Mohammad Kazemi.

These men were part of the supreme leader's inner circle of roughly 15-20 advisers comprising Guards commanders, clerics, and politicians, according to the sources who including three people who attend or have attended meetings with the leader on major issues and two close to officials who regularly attend.

The loose group meets on an ad-hoc basis, when Khamenei's office reaches out to relevant advisers to gather at his compound in Tehran to discuss an important decision, all the people said. Members are characterized by unwavering loyalty to him and the ideology of the regime, they added.

Khamenei, who was imprisoned before the 1979 revolution and maimed by a bomb attack before becoming leader in 1989, is profoundly committed to maintaining Iran's system of government and deeply mistrustful of the West.

Under Iran's system of government, he has supreme command of the armed forces, the power to declare war, and can appoint or dismiss senior figures including military commanders and judges.

Khamenei makes the final decision on important matters, though he values advice, listens attentively to diverse viewpoints, and often seeks additional information from his counsellors, according to one source who attends meetings.

"Two things you can say about Khamenei: he is extremely stubborn but also extremely cautious. He is very cautious. That is why he has been in power for as long as he has," said Alex Vatanka, director of the Iran Program at the Middle East Institute think-tank in Washington.

"Khamenei is pretty well placed to do the basic cost-benefit analysis which really fundamentally gets to one issue more important than anything else: regime survival."

KHAMENEI'S SON AT THE FORE

The focus on survival has repeatedly been put to the test. Khamenei has deployed the Revolutionary Guards and its affiliated Basij militia to quell national protests in 1999, 2009 and 2022.

However, while the security forces have always been able to outlast demonstrators and restore state rule, years of Western sanctions have caused widespread economic misery that analysts say could ultimately threaten internal unrest.

The stakes could barely be higher for Khamenei who faces an escalating war with Israel, which has targeted nuclear and military sites and personnel with air attacks, drawing retaliatory Iranian missile fire, insiders and analysts said.

The five people familiar with Khamenei's decision-making process stressed that other insiders who have not been targeted by Israel's strikes remain important and influential, including top advisers on political, economic and diplomatic issues.

Khamenei designates such advisers to handle issues as they arise, extending his reach directly into a wide array of institutions spanning military, security, cultural, political and economic domains, two of the sources said.

Operating this way, including in bodies nominally under the elected president, means Khamenei's office is often involved not only in the biggest questions of state but in executing even minor initiatives, the sources said.

His son Mojtaba has over the past 20 years grown ever more central to this process, the sources said, building a role that cuts between the personalities, factions and organizations involved to coordinate on specific issues, the sources said.

A mid-ranking cleric seen by some insiders as a potential successor to his ageing father, Mojtaba has built close ties with the Guards giving him added leverage within across Iran's political and security apparatus, the sources said.

Ali Asghar Hejazi, the deputy of political security affairs at Khamenei's office, has been involved in sensitive security decisions and is often described as the most powerful intelligence official in Iran, the sources said.

Meanwhile, the head of Khamenei's office, Mohammad Golpayegani, as well as former Iranian foreign ministers Ali Akbar Velayati and Kamal Kharazi, and ex-parliament speaker Ali Larijani, remain trusted confidants on diplomatic and domestic policies issues such as the nuclear dispute, the sources said.

The loss of the Revolutionary Guards commanders nonetheless decimates the top ranks of a military organization that he has put at the center of power since becoming supreme leader in 1989, relying on it for both internal security and Iran's regional strategy.

While the regular army chain of command runs through the defense ministry under the elected president, the Guards answer personally to Khamenei, securing the best military equipment for their land, air and sea branches and giving their commanders a major state role.

As he faces one of the most dangerous moments in the country’s history, Khamenei finds himself further isolated by the recent losses of other key advisers in the region as Iran's "Axis of Resistance" coalition has been hammered by Israel.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, who was personally close to the Iranian leader, was killed by an Israeli airstrike in September last year and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was overthrown by opposition factions in December.