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Israeli settlers took over a Palestinian house��in the ��in Jerusalem on Tuesday. The house is a two-bedroom apartment on the rooftop of a three-story building that��belongs��to the Hileisi family, whose eight members live in the building, including two elderly and four children.

"Israeli settlers arrived in the morning and broke the front door," Majd Hileisi, a family member, told ������.

"At first I saw the Israeli police, who protected the settlers, so I thought that they had come to ," he added.��"A��week ago, they demolished another property of mine because it was built without a permit, as most houses and properties in Silwan."

Zionist settlers seized a Palestinian owned residential flat in the town of Silwan, southern al-Aqsa mosque.

— Palestinian Eve Network+🇵🇸 (@PalEvePlus)

According to Hileisi, the Israeli settlers are claiming the property of the roof-top apartment.

"They said that the apartment on top belonged to them and that they had bought it, but they didn't show any papers.��When we asked to see some papers, the officer told me that we should ask at the court," he said.��

Palestinian media reported that the apartment had been allegedly sold by Majd Hileisi's brother.

"My brother disappeared three days ago and no longer answers his phone," said Hileisi.

"He has been separated from his wife for two years. She and their five children live with us and also do not know where he had gone," stressed Hileisi. "If he did sell the apartment to the settlers, the family will publicly renounce as a member of our family."��

"In case there was an actual purchase, it is��still illegal," noted Khaled Al-Zeer, an activist at the Wadi Hilweh Information Centre, a group that monitors Israeli settlement expansion settlements��, told ������.

Settlers install surveillance cameras on the house they seized in Silwan..
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— Dwi_4Palestine🇮🇩🇵🇸❤🌹 (@dwi_PAL1109)

"The house is collectively owned by the Hileisi brothers," pointed out Al-Zeer. "The alleged seller decided to build the apartment on the rooftop, and all his brothers and sisters signed concessions to their share in the rooftop to him, except two, which means that he can not sell the property."

Al-Zeer and Hileisi both noted that the family, with the help of residents of Silwan, the alleged purchase and takeover.

"Purchases are often made by organized settler groups," Khalil Tafakji, a��Palestinian expert on Israeli settlements in Jerusalem and director of the maps unit at Jerusalem's Orient House, told ������.

Vice-Chair : In recent months, Israeli authorities have enforced or attempted to enforce evictions of Palestinian residents from their homes in the neighborhoods of and to give their homes to Jewish settlers.

— UN Palestinian Rights Committee (@UNISPAL)

"The Elaad and organizations are the ones operating in Silwan,"��explained Tafakji. "Silwan is important to Israeli settlers because it is the immediate southern west of Jerusalem's old city,��where Israel plans to build the ."

According to Tafakji, "Israeli purchases do not take into account if the property is collectively owned, which many are because of shared inheritance across large numbers of siblings.��As long as there is one member willing to sell, Israel focuses on that,��and these sales��always happen in secret."

"This is��only one of many methods used by settler organizations and Israeli authorities to take over Palestinian property in Jerusalem," he added. "The most common method��is��, and relying on Israel's��Jewish property law and the Absentee's property law."

Israel's��Absentee's property law allows the state to confiscate property if the owner is out of the country, while the Jewish property allows any Jewish Israeli to claim property that had Jewish owners any time before 1948.

Maps illustrating colonial landmarks and plans in the town of Silwan, where touristic development is used by the occupation authorities as a cover to settler-colonial activities that aim at the displacement of Palestinian communities.

— Grassroots Al-Quds (@grassroots_quds)

Settler organizations in Silwan��work in cooperation with Israeli government bodies, like the Absentees' Property Custodian, the General Custodian and the Ministry of Finance.

, Israeli settler organizations "receive backing and protection from the Israeli government" and the��collusion��between two��"has been documented, even if it is still difficult to estimate its extent."��

For its part,����notes that��the pressure on families who live on a property the settlers covet for themselves "often puts them in a cruel dilemma – agree to leave in return for significant sums of money, or refuse and still risk losing the property (a very real possibility given the expulsion of other families in the neighbourhood), accruing serious debt and suffering harassment."

Some 68 Palestinian families are in Silwan. Human rights groups' records show an increase of 39% in the number of new construction sites designated for Jews in Palestinian neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem.