The Struggle for Silwan

With great enthusiasm, our guide recites long quotations from the Book of Psalms. Her voice vibrates, giving an immediate feeling that she is saying something weighty. She wants to tell us that this site bears witness both to the history and the future - it's almost as if the time between creation and the end of the world is stretched out before your eyes.

The scene is what Israeli settlers call the “City of David,” on a hillside just south of the Old City of Jerusalem - the contentious heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For Palestinians the area consists of three different districts, collectively known as Silwan. A vibrant Palestinian community is about to be destroyed to make way for excavations in search of an ancient historical site.

"It was here that everything started," we are told by a film at the start of this three-hour "official" tour by the settler group, Elad, which is conducting the digs.  Our young guide  has American parents who moved to Israel. She was born here, she loves this country, and she dreams of a new golden age in which a third temple will be built. She repeats the slogan from the film.

"This is where it started ... This is the only place on earth where the Bible is the only guidebook you need," she says.

Her tone betrays no hint of how archeology and history can be selected, distorted and altered for political and religious propaganda. Nearly 500 000 visitors come here every year, and the diversity of the area’s history is wiped out when they hear this narrative. The guide only provides one history, about one people. The thousands of years of history before and since David disappear before the visitors’ eyes, along with 55,000 Palestinians who make up most of the area’s population.

Those Palestinians are not even visible. Tourists’ eyes are protected by high fences and selected paths. Rather than showing the diversity and historical richness of this area, a historical continuity is constructed that will legitimize the eviction of hundreds Palestinians from their homes, although some have lived here for decades.

Jawad Siyam’s family built a house here in 1952. His grandmother's house was taken over by Israeli settlers in the early 1990s. Settlers used devious means to try and take over the house in 1994 when his father died. This was the start of the children's fight, both for their own house and for their neighborhood. Thirteen people now live here. Jawad is head of the Wadi Hilwah Information Center that is trying to spread information about what is happening in the area and take care of the residents.

The Silwan Community Center runs workshops for children who want to learn to play an instrument, do theater or sports. There is a library, a center for nonviolent conflict resolution, and some production of handicrafts. Jawad says, with intensity in his eyes: “there is commitment, this is important, this is now my life.”

Since 1997, when Elad received permission to dig at the site, Palestinian presence in the area has become increasingly precarious. Although the Palestinian citizens pay municipal taxes like everyone else, they get little in return. In Silwan there is no playground, no green park, no library, no cafeteria, no cinema, no sporting facility or public clinic. Nobody is allowed to build or extend their house, and many families are waiting for their home to be demolished or forcibly taken over by Israeli settlers. Currently, 88 housing demolition orders have been issued to Palestinians here.

Alternative Israeli and Palestinian tour operators have also engaged in the area. For the small groups who are interested, they tell the alternative history and the stories of Palestinian families in the area and explain the municipality’s plan to surround Jerusalem with Jewish settlements so that the city will never be divided as part of a future, equitable peace deal.

“Imagine here are 55,000 inhabitants in the town, and over 50% are under 18 years,” says Jawad.

“We want to stay here. This is our country also, our ancestral land. I want the children who come after me, to have a good life here too. They should know they belong here and that they also have a history here. That's what drives me. Talk about our struggle to whoever you can.”