Palestinians in Silwan selling houses to Jews, taking the money and fleeing

Two Silwan properties were found to have been sold to Jews within the past month.

On July 1, it was revealed that Walid Atout sold his apartment to Jews. He and his family fled because they could be killed for selling to Jews.

From the Silwan Information Center:

About the property, the information center clarified that about a week ago, there was talk about selling it to unknown parties, so notables from the town of Silwan and members of local committees spoke with the owner of the property named Walid Atout, where he denied the sale, pointing out that he received an offer to sell it to Turkish authorities, but he did not do so. He remained at home with his family until Thursday morning.

The Wadi Hilweh Information Center added that amid the investigations conducted by the committees and the competent authorities over the past few days, it was found that Atout sold his house to Ahmed Ighbaryeh from the Palestinian 1948 lands, who handed it over to a contractor for renovations, while Atout and his family of 5 members left the property without emptying its contents and without taking their personal belongings of clothes and other stuff, in order not to draw the attention of the neighboring residents, especially since the property is located inside one of the alleys of Wadi Hilweh neighborhood.

The center added that competent authorities from Silwan had contacted the so-called "Ighbaryeh" on Thursday to find out what was going on and demanded him to come to the property to talk, but he refused and denied that he had leaked the house, and said that he had bought it to turn it into a clinic. The notables managed to talk to him and then he too fled the site.

This week another sale was revealed. Faoud Atallah Siyam had sold his properties to the Elad Association a while ago and subsequently died. His wife wasn't aware of the sale but she was called to a lawyer's office this week where she was shown video of Siyam accepting the money and that he also sold another apartment he owned in the neighborhood to the Jewish group. 

Because the Arab media doesn't want to admit that their own people would sell land to Jews, they use the language (in both Arabic and English) that the properties were "leaked" to the Jews.

These stories don't often make it into Western media because the narrative is that Jews are stealing properties rather than legally purchasing them. If the truth was reported, the media would have to mention the potential death penalty that the PA has for selling land to Jews, which would be awkward and show that the only bigots in this story are the Palestinians. 

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