New ‘Nakba’ in Jerusalem: Israel steps up Silwan demolitions near Al-Aqsa
Submitted by Lubna Masarwa on Fri, 05/08/2026 - 16:24
Palestinians say Israel is using wartime impunity to accelerate expulsions and expand settler-linked biblical parks, with at least 50 homes demolished since October 2023
A man watches as Israeli forces demolish Palestinian homes near the Silwan neighbourhood in occupied East Jerusalem on 22 December 2025 (Ammar Awad/Reuters) Off Pointing to the corner where he once shared tea with his mother, Fakhri Abu Diab stands amid the ruins of his demolished home in anguish.
“I remember as a child going out with my mother to tend the land, then coming back to this spot to share a cup of tea,” the Palestinian father of five said, gesturing towards the shattered remains of what was once his family home.
Located in occupied East Jerusalem's al-Bustan neighbourhood, the house was demolished by Israeli authorities in 2024.
It was one of dozens of Palestinian homes razed in the area south of Al-Aqsa Mosque as part of plans to expand Israeli settler projects and biblical-themed parks.
“They demolished my childhood, my memories, and even the scent of my mother,” Abu Diab, a long-time anti-occupation activist, told Middle East Eye.
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Al-Bustan is one of the three main sections of Silwan, a Palestinian district bordering the southern walls of Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City.
For decades, Silwan and other Palestinian neighbourhoods surrounding the Old City have been at the centre of Israeli demolition campaigns and displacement efforts.
North of the Old City, Sheikh Jarrah has been the focus of long-standing settler activity. In Ras al-Amoud, south-east of the Old City, hundreds of settlers live in heavily guarded, gated communities.
Years of Palestinian resistance and international scrutiny slowed the advance of state-backed settler organisations in these area.
However, since the genocide in Gaza began in October 2023, the situation has shifted dramatically.
Fakhri Abu Diab stands amid the rubble of his home after it was demolished by Israeli forces in the occupied East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Silwan on 14 February 2024 (AFP/Ahmad Gharabli)
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Israeli authorities have accelerated home demolitions and expulsions across East Jerusalem, with al-Bustan among the hardest-hit areas, while also violently suppressing protest and dissent. Overall, an estimated 20,000 Palestinian-owned homes are under demolition orders across the city.
Amid the mounting repression, scarce international support and little media attention, Palestinians say they feel increasingly defenceless.
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As Israel moves swiftly and with impunity, residents fear entire Palestinian communities could disappear not only in Silwan, but also in Sheikh Jarrah and Ras al-Amoud.
It would alter the demographic landscape around the Al-Aqsa Mosque, leaving it encircled by a belt of settler compounds and biblical-themed parks, while separating it from Palestinian residents.
In al-Bustan, the scale of destruction is visible at every turn.
Along the neighbourhood’s narrow streets, piles of rubble and flattened homes appear every few metres.
“I used to live here with my wife, my children, and my grandchildren. Ten of us lived in this house,” Abu Diab said.
“The suffering is not only in the demolition of the house, but in the demolition of our past, our lives, and our future.”
‘Wiping out’ al-Bustan
Palestinians in Silwan have faced systematic efforts to displace them since the area became a target for Israeli settlement expansion following Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967.
Home to around 55,000 Palestinians as of 2022, Silwan lies strategically south of Jerusalem’s Old City and Al-Aqsa Mosque.
The district is made up of 12 neighbourhoods spread across roughly 6,000 dunams on the steep slopes of the Kidron Valley and the southern ridge of the Mount of Olives.
Among them, Wadi Hilweh, al-Bustan and Batn al-Hawa have for decades been the primary focus of Israeli home demolitions and forced displacement campaigns.
Shortly after occupying East Jerusalem in 1967, Israeli authorities introduced laws that enabled the transfer of Palestinian property to Jewish ownership in the city, while also launching archaeological excavations in Wadi Hilweh.
At the same time, powerful state-backed settler organisations began pushing plans to remove Palestinians from Silwan to expand biblical-themed tourist sites, including the “City of David” and the proposed “King’s Garden”.
Since the early 00s, over 2,000 Palestinians in the three neighbourhoods have faced the threat of expulsion, either through settler claims over their homes or alleged building violations.
For years, however, the pace of expulsions and demolitions remained relatively slow, largely due to sustained Palestinian resistance and public pressure.
'It increasingly looks as though Israel will wipe out al-Bustan. We do not know how to stop it'
- Aviv Tatarsky, Ir Amim researcher
According to Ziad Ibhais, a researcher specialising in Jerusalem affairs, Israeli authorities demolished no more than 25 homes in Silwan between 2006 and 2023 - roughly one or two homes a year.
That rate has risen sharply since October 2023.
Residents and researchers say Israeli authorities have demolished 54 homes in al-Bustan alone during that period, out of approximately 115 homes in the neighbourhood.
Most of the remaining homes are now under threat of demolition.
The municipality has been moving so rapidly and aggressively with demolitions, telling residents it will act swiftly if they do not immediately carry out self-demolitions by set deadlines. Delays in doing so incur heavy financial penalties.
In some recent cases, municipal workers have reportedly told residents they will keep returning.
“We are going to come every week and demolish more homes,” they said, according to Aviv Tatarsky, a researcher at the Israeli human rights organisation Ir Amim, who described the situation as a “devastating” escalation against Palestinians.
“The people of Silwan defended their homes for over 20 years, and now they feel they can no longer stop what is happening,” Tatarsky told MEE.
“The same is true for groups like ours, which have worked on this issue and stood alongside the people of Silwan for many years,” he added.
Tatarsky said the acceleration in demolitions marked a “very dangerous” turning point that could ultimately lead to the emptying of Silwan’s Palestinian communities.
While al-Bustan has borne the brunt of the recent demolitions, other neighbourhoods have also come under increasing pressure.
In Batn al-Hawa, around 100 Palestinian families have faced the threat of forced expulsion by settler groups for years.
At least 50 families have already been displaced, including more than 30 in the past two years alone.
“It is a terrible crisis,” Tatarsky said.
“It increasingly looks as though Israel will - difficult as it is to say - wipe out al-Bustan. We do not know how to stop it.”
Biblical parks
According to Tatarsky, the decision to intensify demolitions in al-Bustan was far from arbitrary.
The neighbourhood - home to around 1,500 Palestinians - sits strategically between Wadi Hilweh to the north and west and Batn al-Hawa to the east, where roughly 2,500 Israeli settlers live in heavily guarded compounds.
Removing Palestinians from al-Bustan, Tatarsky explained, would help create territorial continuity between the settler enclaves and connect them more seamlessly to the rest of the city.
Al-Bustan also lies close to the Green Line, the 1949 armistice boundary that effectively separates West Jerusalem, in Israel proper, from occupied East Jerusalem.
If al-Bustan is emptied of its Palestinian residents, areas of West Jerusalem could be linked more directly to the settlements established inside Silwan.
Tatarsky said settler organisations ultimately aim to normalise the idea that Silwan is simply another part of West Jerusalem.
“If Israel succeeds, and people begin moving from west Jerusalem into al-Bustan as part of their normal daily life, then very quickly, in Israeli public consciousness, this will no longer be considered Silwan,” he said.
“It will become West Jerusalem, connected to biblical history and all that comes with it.
“So al-Bustan is central to dramatically changing what Silwan is.”
Israeli authorities have largely justified the demolitions in al-Bustan on the grounds of building regulation violations.
The Israeli-run Jerusalem Municipality classifies many of the homes as illegal because they were built without permits, which are nearly impossible to obtain for Palestinians.
Silwan: How history and religion are exploited to displace Palestinians Read More »
Critics argue that framing the demolitions as a matter of planning or environmental regulation obscures their political nature, as the law is selectively enforced.
According to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, demolition orders against some buildings in al-Bustan appeared to stall recently after the properties were sold to settler groups.
At the same time, settler organisations have been allowed to establish facilities including an events hall, synagogue, restaurant and visitor centre despite planning violations.
The demolitions are ultimately intended to clear space for a Jewish archaeological park known as the “King’s Garden”, which would connect to the “City of David” tourist complex established atop Palestinian lands in Wadi Hilweh.
“There is no ownership dispute, no court ruling, and no justification for these executive measures other than transforming a built and inhabited neighbourhood into a park shaped by Zionist religious narratives,” Ibhais told MEE.
“That is what makes al-Bustan emblematic of the wider conduct of the occupation municipality in Jerusalem,” he said, adding that it is not an issue of urban planning, development or public services, as the municipality maintains.
“These powers are being used against Palestinian landowners to impose nationalist-religious visions adopted by the [Israeli] occupation municipality on land over which it has neither sovereignty nor legal authority under international law.”
Israel's occupation of East Jerusalem, including the Old City, violates several principles of international law, which stipulates that an occupying power has no sovereignty in the territory it occupies and cannot make any permanent changes there.
More than 233,000 settlers live in occupied East Jerusalem, alongside over 500,000 in the occupied West Bank, according to the NGO Peace Now. Israeli settlements are widely regarded as a violation of international law.
‘New Nakba’
The two settler organisations leading efforts to displace Palestinians from Silwan are Ateret Cohanim, founded in 1978, and Elad, established in 1986.
Although both groups are formally registered as private non-profit organisations, they are widely seen as operating with extensive state backing.
They receive political support in the Israeli parliament, benefit from cooperation with Israeli police and have access to government funding.
“They are effectively an arm of the state,” Tatarsky said.
The groups have worked for years to remove Palestinians from Silwan, often through legal channels, by saying that homes once belonged to Jewish families before 1948 or arguing that the land sits atop sites of archaeological significance.
'If there is no real action, there will be a new Nakba for the people of Jerusalem'
- Fakhri Abu Diab, Silwan resident
Palestinian residents have repeatedly tried to challenge both the settler organisations and municipality-led demolitions through the courts, but to no avail.
On two separate occasions, Silwan residents drafted alternative urban plans that would preserve existing homes while rehabilitating and developing the neighbourhood.
According to a letter sent by the residents’ representative, Ziad Kawar, to Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Leon, most families agreed to what was described as an “extremely stringent proposal” in an effort to save the neighbourhood from demolition.
But the municipality ultimately withdrew from negotiations in February and informed families that the demolition plans would proceed.
The collapse of those efforts, coupled with the absence of meaningful legal protection for Palestinians and ultimately the demolitions themselves, has left residents in despair.
Abu Diab said most families whose homes have been demolished initially move in with relatives.
Some manage to rent elsewhere in Jerusalem, but many cannot afford the soaring costs, forcing families to disperse across different areas, including his own.
“Our way of life is to live together as extended families - with your children, your brothers, your cousins, all close to one another,” said Abu Diab, a grandfather of 16.
“Now we are facing a housing crisis, a psychological crisis, and a health crisis. We have been completely scattered,” he added.
“They have destroyed our social fabric and our support system.”
A demolished section of Fakhri Abu Diab’s family home lies in the yard of the property in Silwan in occupied East Jerusalem on 12 April 2026 (AFP/Marco Longari)
Tatarsky believes the accelerating demolitions reflect a growing sense within the Israeli state that it can pursue more extreme measures against Palestinians, amid regional turmoil and ongoing wars in Gaza and elsewhere.
“The international community has either given Israel a green light or is focused almost entirely on Gaza,” he said. “So Israel acts with impunity.”
Abu Diab fears the consequences will extend far beyond al-Bustan itself.
“Al-Bustan matters because it is where we were born and raised, but also because it is the heart of Silwan,” he said.
“If Israel takes control of Silwan, it will pave the way for greater control over Al-Aqsa Mosque.
“If there is no real action, the area will change completely, and there will be a new Nakba for the people of Jerusalem.”
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