French Hill (, HaGiv'a HaTzarfatit, , at-tel al-faransiya), also Giv'at Shapira (), is an Israeli settlement in northern East Jerusalem. It is located on territory that has been occupied since the Six-Day War in 1967 and later unilaterally annexed by Israel under the Jerusalem Law, in a move internationally condemned as illegal, "null and void" under international law, in 1980. The international community considers Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem, such as French Hill, illegal under international law, which the Israeli government disputes. Etymology The source of the name French Hill is the fact that the land belonged to the Catholic Monastery of St Anne, whose monks hailed mainly from France. In 1926 the Monastery donated a plot of land to built a reservoir to store water that was pumped from Ein Farah, to supply the city of Jerusalem. An opening ceremony was held on 15 July 1926 and the location was reported in the newspapers as "the French Hill" (at the time in Hebrew in plural - Giv'at Ha'Zorfatim). According to local legend, it was named after a British general, John French, 1st Earl of Ypres who is said to have had his headquarters on this hill. According to this legend there was a mistake with the translation to Hebrew that named the place after the country France (in Hebrew: Tzarfat). However, French never served in this region. Had the neighborhood been named for General French, the correct name in Hebrew would have been Giv'at French. History Under Jordanian rule, the area () was a military outpost. According to Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi, a small number of Palestinians from Lifta moved to the area prior to 1967. According to ARIJ, Israel confiscated land from the following Palestinian neighbourhoods/villages in order to construct French Hill in 1968: 394 dunams from Isawiya, 394 dunams from Shuafat. In 1969, construction began on a new residential neighborhood to create a land link between West Jerusalem and the Hebrew University on Mount Scopus, which had been an Israeli enclave in Jordanian territory before the war. The official name of the new neighborhood was Giv'at Shapira. Then prime minister Levi Eshkol envisioned French Hill as the "first planned urban community in modern Jerusalem." In 2014, it was described as a clean, quiet neighborhood with bicycle trails, parks, fitness centers, a community center and many synagogues. Another section of French Hill, Tzameret HaBira, was populated by American