Archaeology used politically to push out Silwan residents
Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada,
26 September 2008
A
Palestinian teenager sits outside a protest tent in Silwan, next to
a
site where Israeli settlers are excavating a tunnel. (Jonathan Cook)
From just outside Jerusalem's Old City walls, the simple stone and
cinder-block homes of Silwan cascade southwards into a valley known as
the Holy Basin.
The Palestinian residents are used to living in the shadow of history
and religion, given dramatic physical form as the great silver dome of
the al-Aqsa mosque and the looming presence of the Mount of Olives. But
of late, history has become a curse for most of Silwan's residents.
"We have cameras everywhere watching us night and day," said Jawad
Siyam, 39. "Armed Israeli guards wander through our alleys. Our open
areas, the places where I played as a child, have become no-go zones."
The reason is the growing number of settlers who have moved into Silwan
since the early 1990s claiming a biblical right to the land. At least
50 Jewish families, comprising 250 people, have taken over Palestinian
homes dotted across Silwan and turned them into secure compounds over
which Israeli flags flutter.
Similar takeovers are occurring out of sight in other Palestinian areas
of occupied East Jerusalem. The settler organizations, backed by
private donors from abroad, hope to make a peace agreement impossible
and so ensure East Jerusalem never becomes the capital of a Palestinian
state.
But only in Silwan have the settlers defied the law so publicly, openly
recruiting an array of official Israeli bodies, from the Antiquities
Authority to the Jerusalem municipality.
Silwan's takeover is being masterminded by a shadowy organization known
as Elad, which unusually has been preferred over the Nature and Parks
Authority to run an important archaeological site in the village center.
With funding provided by secretive backers in Russia and the United
States, Elad has transformed Silwan into the "City of David." Even the
signposts in the area are oblivious to the existence of the Palestinian
village and its tens of thousands of residents.
The heart of the City of David is an archaeological park that is being relentlessly extended into ever more corners of Silwan.
"The settlers began by taking over homes around the site," said Siyam,
whose grandmother's home was one of the first to be seized in 1994
after her death. "Then they were given the main excavation site, and
built new homes in the park. And now they are finding new sites,
fencing off more land and digging under our houses."
Many homes in Siyam's neighborhood have developed cracks in the walls,
he said, after excavations began last year to unearth a drainage
channel believed to be from the period of King Herod. Residents fear
their foundations have been damaged.
The dig was intended to run 600 meters underground to the walls of
Jerusalem's Old City, but was halted by the courts in February after it
emerged that the archaeologists were digging without licenses.
Nonetheless, Elad has recently begun work on other tunnels.
The organization's main focus is the City of David site itself, over
which it was given control in 1998 in a dubious deal with the Parks
Authority and Jerusalem municipality.
Elad has poured money into excavating the area and subcontracted
Israel's main archaeological body, the Antiquities Authority, to
oversee the uncovering of what appears to be the original location of
Jerusalem.
"This is an important site, but Elad has a very clear agenda," said
Yonathan Mizrachi, a former archaeologist for the Antiquities
Authority. "They want to use archaeology, even bogus archaeology, to
provide cover for their political agenda of pushing Silwan's
Palestinians out.
"What is so disturbing is that they seem to be setting the agenda of the Antiquities Authority, too."
Mizrachi and two other archaeologists have been leading alternative
tours of the City of David since January in a bid to challenge Elad's
claims that it has unearthed the 3,000-year-old palace of King David,
thereby making Silwan the capital of an ancient Israelite kingdom.
But the dissident archaeologists face a Herculean task. Last year,
350,000 tourists were led around the site by Elad guides. The
intermittent alternative tours are lucky to muster a dozen visitors.
"If Elad can convince people that this was once the home of King David,
then it will be easier for them to justify their takeover of Silwan and
the removal of the Palestinian population," Mizrachi said.
The archaeologist in charge of the City of David excavations, Eilat
Mazar, has ostensibly uncovered such evidence in the form of ancient
stone walls she said belong to King David's palace.
But Rafi Greenberg, a professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University,
who was among those excavating the site in the late 1970s, called the
work being done under Elad's supervision "bad science."
Once his concerns were widely and publicly shared by archaeologists in
Israel. In the mid-1990s Elad faced a legal battle over its damaging of
ancient relics. In 1997 the Antiquities Authority cautioned against
handing the park over to Elad. And in 1998 archeologists from Hebrew
University in Jerusalem petitioned the Supreme Court over Elad's
mismanagement of the City of David site.
However, as Elad's control of Silwan has tightened, and the City of
David's popularity has grown, the voices of dissent have fallen quiet.
The budget-constrained Antiquities Authority needs Elad's funding, and
Israeli archaeologists, dependent on the Authority for work, dare not
criticize its involvement with Elad openly.
When news emerged in June that, in what the Antiquities Authority later
admitted was "a serious mishap," dozens of skeletons from the early
Islamic period unearthed in Silwan close to the al-Aqsa mosque had been
discarded without inspection, no archaeologist would speak on the
record.
Instead, it has been left mainly to international scholars, including
renowned historians and archaeologists, to launch a petition demanding
that the site be removed from Elad's control.
Mizrachi said despite the City of David site being one of the most
studied in Israel, no physical evidence shows that King David ever used
the buildings. Little more can be deduced than that the remains date to
the Canaanite period 3,000 years ago. "Even if we did find a Hebrew
inscription saying 'Welcome to King David's palace,' that would not
justify Elad's political aims. The residents of Silwan and their
ancestors have been living here for hundreds of years and their rights
cannot be ignored. Every time a Christian site is found in Israel
should the Vatican be given the land and Israelis evicted from their
homes?"
Such arguments have fallen on deaf ears.
According to a series of reports in the local media, the government,
state archeologists, the Jerusalem municipality and the police have all
colluded with Elad and another settler organization, Ateret Cohanim, in
extending the settlers' control of Silwan.
A series of court judgments going back more than a decade have found
the settlers falsified documents to seize land and property from
Palestinian families and that they built in contravention of local
planning laws. The judgments have been ignored and the evictions gone
unenforced by the police and the municipality. The Israeli government
is also continuing to fund the security guards who keep watch over the
illegal homes.
Last month, Yossi Havillo, Jerusalem's legal adviser, pointed out that
the municipality's refusal to enforce a long-standing eviction order
against eight families in a settlement known as Beit Yehonatan was
likely to "arouse concern of discrimination and of the municipality's
implementation of demolition orders against Arabs, but not against
Jews."
He was referring in part to a decision in 2005, under pressure from
Elad, to order the demolition of 88 Palestinian homes in the Bustan
neighborhood, just below Elad's archaeological site. Uri Sheetrit, the
city engineer, justified the demolitions on the grounds that the valley
is liable to flooding. The orders were temporarily suspended under
international pressure.
In contrast, the municipality is still assisting in the expansion of
Silwan's settlements. In May, it began approving a plan submitted by
Elad for a new housing complex, synagogue, kindergarten, library and
underground parking for 100 cars.
Councillors also backed the confiscation of land from nine private
Palestinian owners to create a car park for the City of David. In July
the courts overruled the decision.
In a familiar pattern, said Siyam, the day the court ruling was issued,
the police raided the homes of the Palestinians who had filed the
petitions and arrested them. Similar arrests occurred earlier in the
year when residents petitioned the courts to halt the excavations under
their homes.
Meanwhile, Shuka Dorfman, the director of the Antiquities Authority,
recently told reporters that he was against "bringing politics into
archaeology."
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
This article originally appeared in The National published in Abu Dhabi and is republished with permission.