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14-06-2026
JERUSALEM: There is the loud din of a demolition below Jerusalem’s walled Old City and from a hillside I watch a large Israeli excavator tearing into a Palestinian house.
Some 59 properties have now been destroyed in the al-Bustan area of the Silwan neighborhood since late 2023. With world attention diverted by the war in Gaza and now in Iran and Lebanon, there has been a dramatic rise in the number of Palestinians being pushed from their homes in Israeli-occupied east of the city.
“There is no future. They destroyed the future and everything else,” says Fayez Awad, 58, who is sitting in the only remaining floor of his property when I reach him.
“We spent our whole lives building this house. This is all we managed to achieve in life. They brought us back to zero again, me and my children.”
Holy to Jews, Christians and Muslims, Jerusalem is at the heart of the Israel-Palestinian conflict and competing claims to the land. Israel captured the east of the city, including its holy places, along with the rest of the West Bank from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East War and later annexed it in a move that is not recognized by most countries.
For some 20 years, Israel’s Jerusalem Municipality has pursued plans to turn al-Bustan into a biblically-themed park, the King’s Garden, to be run by a Jewish settler organization. Recently, demolition orders enforced by Israeli courts have accelerated along the narrow streets here.
Settlements and the forced transfer of a population from occupied land are illegal under international law.
The Jerusalem Municipality told media in a statement that it was working “for the benefit of all city residents” and that it aimed “to build a park in a zone that suffers from a severe shortage of open public spaces”.
Palestinians point out that Israeli construction permits in East Jerusalem are almost impossible for them to get. According to the Israeli human rights group Bimkom, in 2025, only 7% of new housing approved in Jerusalem was for Palestinians, who account for some 40% of the city’s population. People in al-Bustan say that their efforts to reach a compromise on alternative planning proposals were rejected by the local authority.
Half of the homes here have now been demolished. Many residents facing demolition orders are opting to take sledgehammers to their own properties to avoid hefty costs and fines imposed by the municipality which typically total tens of thousands of dollars.
“We’re being given warnings that in the coming months they’ll destroy the rest of the houses,” says local activist Fakhri Abu Diab. His home was previously demolished, and he and his wife are now threatened with eviction from the caravan they set up by the rubble.
“Israel is using the geopolitical situation to finish the issue. It’s very difficult and painful and the international community has left us all alone,” Abu Diab goes on. “The municipality is waging a war of bulldozers against us and our presence
Israel has built about 160 settlements housing 700,000 Jews in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. While most Israelis see all of Jerusalem as their united capital, Palestinians want the east as the capital of their hoped-for, future, independent state. The current Israeli government has pledged “to bury” the idea of Palestinian statehood and is taking steps accordingly.
According to the UN, some 200 Palestinian households about 900 people are facing eviction cases filed against them in the Israeli courts, mostly by settlers. (Int’l News Desk)
