{"id":2108,"date":"2005-06-03T15:40:18","date_gmt":"2005-06-03T15:40:18","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2005-06-03T15:40:18","modified_gmt":"2005-06-03T15:40:18","slug":"racist-demolition-plan-of-silwan-homes-stirs-ire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danpal.dk\/?p=2108","title":{"rendered":"‘Racist’ demolition plan of Silwan homes stirs ire"},"content":{"rendered":"
The Jordan Times<\/div>\n

Racist demolition plan of Silwan homes stirs ire<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n

By Omar Karmi, The Jordan Times 2 June 2005<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

http:\/\/jordantimes.com\/thu\/news\/news3.htm<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — It would constitute one of the largest demolitions of Palestinian houses in occupied territory since 1967.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The recently restored 1977 West Jerusalem municipality plan to create a “green zone” immediately outside the Old City’s southern wall in the neighbourhood of Silwan — to, in the words of Israeli city architect Uri Shetrit, “restore the area to its landscape of yore” — entails the destruction of 88 houses, home to some 1,000 people.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

While demolition orders have so far been issued to 30 families, court proceedings have started for the rest, and Shetrit, in statements to the Israeli daily Haaretz, exhibited an almost nonchalant indifference with respect to even those. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Israeli law stipulates that houses built without licence cannot be demolished if seven years pass, and most of the houses in Silwan fall under this<\/p>\n

category. Shetrit, however, has devised a plan to get around that<\/p>\n

law.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

“The building offence runs out, but there’s no statute of limitation on using the illegal house, so we can bar residents from entering their homes even if we can’t destroy them,” he told Haaretz on May 31. Getting subsequent demolition orders for empty houses would then be a lot easier.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly the plan has been greeted with outrage by the<\/p>\n

residents of this low-income community.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

“There are 11 people in my house,” said Haj Mazen Abu Diab, 60. “I have asked the municipality what they intend to do with us, but they have yet to answer.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Abu Diab’s house was built without permit, he conceded, but “decades ago” and anyway, “it is almost impossible for us to get a permit. No one in Silwan wants to break the law, but we have to live.”<\/p>\n

Abu Diab also argued that in many cases the issue of permits is simply a moot point.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

“Many of these houses were built before 1967. These houses precede the occupation. Some were even built in the 1920s. These precede the creation of the state of Israel. It is not only unreasonable, it is immoral to be asking for permits for these houses.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

His barely concealed anger was reflected in the statements and faces of Silwan residents who had gathered on May 31 in a makeshift tent in the neighbourhood erected for a public demonstration against the planned demolitions.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Speaker after speaker denounced the demolition as “yet another example of Israel’s racist policies,” as one put it. “We [Palestinians] have only two choices,” said another to loud applause and shouts of “Allahu Akbar.” “Either we get together and fight these policies, or we will be moved the hell out of here never to come back.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

From an eight-year-old boy to an elderly imam, the same unity of purpose and anger was bellowed out over the loudspeakers. But while lawyers have been engaged to fight the demolitions, some residents acknowledged a sense of foreboding.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

“The Israelis are pushing us hard,” said Abed, 34, who would not give his family name. “They want to do this no matter what.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Abed’s despondency partly derives from the street picture up the steep hill towards the Old City. Fronted by metal gates and armed guards, several houses sporting Israeli flags and driveways cluttered with people carriers decorated with orange streamers (to protest the planned evacuation of settlers from the Gaza Strip and four West Bank settlements in August), are testament to the<\/p>\n

determination Abed is talking about. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The settlements were established in 1998, when a far-right religious group, Elad, purchased a number of properties in the neighbourhood.<\/p>\n

“Many people don’t understand these collaborators,” said Abed, referring to those who sold their houses to the settlers. “I understand them perfectly well. I know some of them. They couldn’t put bread on the table for their children. They were unemployed and unwanted. The settlers offered them a lot of money. I don’t excuse it, I think it is treason, but I understand it. We are under a lot of pressure.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Abed himself is unemployed. He says he is unemployable because he spent years in an Israeli prison for having a Palestinian political affiliation. He says he has come to hate his neighbourhood because of the settlers.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

“I live next to them, and everyday they show me how much they hate me. But why did they come here? They think God gave them this country, but they still chose to come here. I was born here. I had no choice.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Indeed, the neighbourhood has been a special target for religious Jewish groups, who have identified the area as the garden of the biblical King David. Hence, it would seem, the plan to recreate that garden. Shetrit was not available for comment on May 31, when contacted for this article, and Israel’s antiquities authority told the Associated Press on May 31 that it was unaware of the plans. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

But in his remarks to Haaretz, Shetrit said the plan would create a “national” park without Palestinian residents to abut what Israel calls the “City of David” right along Jerusalem’s Old City. He denied, however, that the plan had any connection to the Elad group. <\/p>\n

It was not a convincing argument to Dimitri Dilyani of the Christian National Coalition and one of the organisers of the May 31 demonstration.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

“So this is where David supposedly washed his clothes. What next?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Where David lived, where he prayed,” he asked nodding in the direction of the Old City and the Aqsa Mosque, perched in the sunlight in clear view from Silwan. “Demolishing these houses will legitimise demolitions for archaeological purposes, and there’s no telling where that will end.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Sami Arshid, a lawyer representing some of the families threatened with eviction, believes there is room for guarded optimism.<\/p>\n

“I am hopeful for two reasons: Some of these houses were built before 1967, and while Israeli law considers them without permit there is such a thing as submission, meaning they should fall under Jordanian law. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Secondly, to implement a nearly 30-year-old plan that pays no consideration to population demands or growth in the area is simply unreasonable. That plan, furthermore, made no mention of specific houses to be demolished, and as such, I believe, legitimises those houses built before it was created, even if they have no permit.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, Arshid is cautious. “All the houses are built without permit, and as such the residents are on shaky ground. And the municipality could win an injunction against the use of these houses, if not their demolition,” he said.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the best weapon residents have is public outrage. Gathered at the May 31 protest were several members of the international press as well as the Israeli press, and Dilyani said that both his own group and Fateh’s “Operational Office for the National Institutions in Jerusalem” were working hard to raise both Israeli and international public awareness on the issue.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

“This is an outrageous project, but until now, no one has shown any interest. We need people to understand what is happening here. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

This is all a part of the battle for Jerusalem.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Shetrit expects rulings to be fairly imminent. With regards to houses built before 1977, he said, a ruling should be forthcoming in mid-July, while the fate of newer houses may be decided as soon as mid-June.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

As such Dilyani’s public relations campaign runs up against another campaign against housing evictions, that of right-wing Israeli groups opposed to the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza Strip and West Bank settlements slated for August.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

That campaign has received much more coverage both in the local and international media, with highly visible orange streamers flown on many Israeli cars and Israeli flags fluttering everywhere, as well as the Israeli government’s hand wringing over “Jews evacuating Jews.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

It is also a campaign that has brought Jewish activists out in the streets in force to collect donations to “fight disengagement.” <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Just a hundred yards up the steep hill from Silwan, and inside the Marghrabi Gate that leads to the large open plaza in front of the Buraq or Western Wall of the Haram Al Sharif, several such collectors shook their donation jars at passersby.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

They were probably unaware that they were shaking their jars on the site of the first large-scale eviction and house demolitions that took place in 1967. The open plaza inside the Marghrabi Gate was created shortly after the Israeli occupation of the Old City, when the then Moroccan Quarter, home to some 650 people, was razed and most of its inhabitants moved to the refugee camp in Shoufat where their descendants remain to this day.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

‘Racist’ demolition plan of Silwan homes stirs ire<\/p>\n

By Omar Karmi<\/p>\n

The Jordan Times
\n2 June 2005<\/p>\n

http:\/\/jordantimes.com\/thu\/news\/news3.htm<\/p>\n

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — It would constitute one of the largest
\ndemolitions of Palestinian houses in occupie L\u00e6s resten →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,206],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danpal.dk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2108"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danpal.dk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danpal.dk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danpal.dk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danpal.dk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.danpal.dk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2108\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danpal.dk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danpal.dk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danpal.dk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}