In the ‘favorable’ climate created by the war, the Israeli authorities yesterday demolished the Al Bustan Center, in the neighborhood near the Suleiman Walls. An area that for years they have wanted to clear of Arab families to expand the infrastructure of the tourist park that is discovering all the relics of ancient Jewish Jerusalem.
Jerusalem () – While aerial bombardments and missiles are fought in Gaza and Lebanon, in the heart of Jerusalem – right in the shadow of the walls of Suleiman – the front of the bulldozers advances. Yesterday morning they went into action again in the Silwan neighborhood of East Jerusalem to demolish, along with a Palestinian house, a symbolic place: the garden equipped for children that has become the heart of Al Bustan, an NGO Arab who for more than fifteen years has been fighting against the expulsion of dozens of families in the name of the expansion of the archaeological park of the “City of David”, a project that symbolizes the exclusively Jewish identity of Jerusalem carried out by the Israeli nationalist right .
Silwan – an Arab neighborhood of 50,000 inhabitants, which is also the ancient Siloam mentioned in the Gospels – has long been the center of a bitter confrontation, well known to international diplomacy. Until 1967, when this area was still under Jordanian sovereignty, its appearance remained predominantly that of the garden to which its Arabic name refers. But between the 1970s and 1980s – when in “unified” Jerusalem the Israeli administration blocked all planning permits for the construction of new homes in Arab neighborhoods – the current Silwan neighborhood grew “illegally.” However, the situation began to change in the early 2000s, with excavations in an area that – according to some archaeologists – would be the first Jerusalem, that of King David 3,000 years ago.
From that moment on, this area began to attract the attention of Israeli nationalists, determined to unearth everything that speaks of a Jewish presence prior to the time of the Arabs. With the generous financial support of Sheldon Adelson – American casino magnate and great supporter of Netanyahu (and now, through his heirs, also of Donald Trump) – the archaeological park of Ir David (the “City of David”) was born. , which today is one of the main attractions for Jewish tourists visiting Jerusalem.
Entrusted for its management to Elad – an NGO close to the settler circles – it has begun to attack the neighboring houses of the Arabs, claiming Jewish properties in court based on presences prior to the 1948 war. But using the same standard , many Arabs should also be able to reclaim what were their homes and were forced to abandon because of the conflict. Meanwhile, in Silwan, the archaeological park has continued to grow underground (with a network of archaeological tunnels that literally pass under the houses of the Arabs) and also with an option above the sky: right here, in fact, it should have its center is the panoramic cable car, another discussed tourism project that has been hanging over Jerusalem for years.
It is not surprising, then, that the war – with all the cautions that have been launched – has become an opportunity for new blows in a strategic area like Silwan. In July, the Jerusalem District Court gave the green light to the eviction of 87 families from their homes, a total of 680 people. And despite calls from the UN human rights office, bulldozers are proceeding with demolitions one by one. Yesterday, therefore, it was also the turn of Na’im Roweidi’s house, whose courtyard housed the Al-Bustan Center for children and the “solidarity tent”, for years the local community’s protest prison against the demand to empty Silwan of its inhabitants.
The Consulate General of France in Jerusalem also protested yesterday against the demolition, recalling that the Government of Paris, together with 21 French local administrations, had supported the Al Bustan Center with more than half a million euros since 2019, to offer “more than “Thousand children and young people cultural and sporting activities and essential educational and psychological support.” Arab faces and presences for which there is no longer a place in the projects of the Go David.
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