More than 57 homes in al-Bustan have been demolished in the past two years, with at least eight more slated for demolition in the coming weeks. The neighborhood, located in the Silwan district of East Jerusalem, is being cleared to make way for the Kings Garden, a biblical theme park where King Solomon is said to have taken his leisure three millennia ago.
Residents Forced to Demolish Their Own Homes
Jalal al-Tawil watched as a tractor he hired tore apart the last remnants of his family home, built by his father on the site of his grandparents' house. “This is something really hard. This is something bitter,” he said. Al-Tawil chose to demolish his own home because the Jerusalem municipality would charge him 280,000 shekels (£72,000) for the demolition, while hiring his own equipment cost less than a tenth of that. “Also, if they do it, they will uproot the land and make a complete mess,” he added. For him, it was like choosing between suicide or being murdered.
The Kings Garden Project
The Kings Garden theme park is part of a larger, settler-driven archaeological project focusing on Jerusalem's Jewish past, centered on what is called the City of David. However, many Israeli archaeologists argue that the visible remains date to other eras. Aviv Tatarsky of Ir Amim, a group advocating for an equitably shared Jerusalem, said the project erases Palestinians from geography and history. “Israel is not willing to recognise the bi-national, multi-ethnic, multicultural reality of Jerusalem and it is wiping out first and foremost Palestinians – but really anything that is not Jewish, and then glossing it over with this Disneyfied nonsense,” he said.
Resistance and Consequences
Resistance to the demolitions, which had held back the bulldozers for nearly two decades, has weakened since the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks, the Gaza war, and Donald Trump's return to the US presidency. Mohammad Qwaider, 60, recently demolished part of his family home in hopes of appeasing planners, but was warned that the rest would be leveled. “If they demolish our house, we will put up a tent. We will not leave,” he said. His mother, Yusra, 97, who fled Jaffa in 1948 and was displaced again in 1967, said, “From here, we are not leaving. Not me, and not my children.”
Community Impact
Fakhri Abu Diab, the al-Bustan community leader, now lives in a portable cabin amid the rubble of his family home, demolished in 2024. He is still paying off a 43,000 shekel fine imposed by the municipality for the demolition. “They demolished our past. They demolished our memories. They demolished our dreams,” he said. His wife, Amina, a schoolteacher, worries about the children: “A house is a child’s dream of the future, and if somebody comes to demolish them, they destroy the dreams and a child’s sense of security.”
The Jerusalem municipality did not respond to a request for comment but told the +972 news site that the park is “being constructed for the benefit of all city residents” and that al-Bustan's houses were built illegally. It said it had tried for years to find a solution for residents, but they did not express serious interest. Residents counter that the municipality routinely denies building permits to Palestinians while approving them for Israeli Jews, and that some homes predate the Israeli occupation.
