Ma'ale ha-Zeitim

Ma'ale ha-Zeitim (Hebrew: מעלה הזיתים‎‎. lit. Olive Heights) is a small Jewish settlement on the Mount of Olives in East Jerusalem, inside the Arab neighborhood of Ras al-Amud. In 2010 its inhabitants numbered some 250 people belonging to 50 families. In 2011 it was projected to house 110 families and eventually merge with the new settlement of Ma'aleh David, designed to replace an old police station across the street from Ma'ale ha-Zeitim, which would make them become the largest Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem. By 2016 Ma'ale ha-Zeitim was housing about 90 families and the adjacent project, now called Maalot David, had 23 housing units.

The international community considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal under international law, but the Israeli government disputes this.

In 2003, a group of eight Jews moved to a compound of three dilapidated homes surrounded by graves in the Sephardi section of the Mount of Olives cemetery. According to the General Burial Society of Jerusalem, which legally owned the site, drug users had taken over the compound, which had become a dumping site for construction debris and a chop shop for stolen cars. Other Jewish property in the area was a gas station a few hundred meters from Ma'aleh Hazeitim and several other buildings.

The burial society plot had been acquired in the mid-19th century by philanthropists Moshe Wittenberg and Nissan Bak, trustees for kollels affiliated with the Chabad and Wollin hassidim. Land on the outskirts of the Mount of Olives was designated as part of the existing Jewish cemetery, but the Turks did not permit the Jews to bury their dead in areas south of the Jerusalem-Jericho road. Meanwhile, the kollels leased the land to an Arab farmer who grew the wheat for a special Passover matza. In 1923, when the British changed the land ownership laws, the land was formally transferred to the Wollin and Chabad kollels. Irving Moskowitz, an American businessman and philanthropist, purchased the land in 1990.

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