Sunday, July 17:  We spent most of our day in the Palestinian village of Silwan, just outside the Old City of Jerusalem. Like Hebron, Silwan is being targeted by extremist settlers who are moving into the heart of their community, displacing residents in the process.

Our visit began at the Ir David (“City of David”) archaeological park. I first visited Ir David in the early 1980s, when it was a relatively small site where civilians could come and sift through the dirt for pot shards. Today, Ir David is nothing short of an archaeological Disneyland – and this is not an exaggeration.

As we approached, we walked alongside a slick mural with a David’s Harp mascot. The site itself was massive and felt like a state of the art theme park, packed with families and schoolchildren. Near the ticket booth, we could hear harp music softly playing in the background. On the surface at least, it would appear that this is a place for Israelis of all ages to have fun making Biblical history come alive. But there is a seriously darker side to the history of Ir David.

Ir David is run by Elad, a private settler association that seeks to claim land and create a Jewish majority in East Jerusalem. Elad’s founder is David Be’eri, a former deputy commander of an Israeli special forces unit. After starting Elad in 1986, Be’eri targeted his first home in Silwan: pretending to be a tour guide, he collected information about the the owners of the house (the family of Musa El Abassi). He then learned that some members of the Abassi family were living abroad – which meant the property could be confiscated under Israel’s Absentee Property Law of 1950 (which allowed Israelis to move into homes vacated when Palestinians fled or were expelled during the 1948 Nakba).

Our host was longtime Silwan leader/activist Zuheir Elrajabi. After lunch in the Al Bustan neighborhood, Zuheir took us on a short tour along Silwan’s narrow winding streets. Because of its proximity to Ir David, Al Bustan is a prime target for Elad; residents there have been living in real fear over the “legal” status of their land and property rights. Current plans for the area call for the demolition of 88 homes inhabited by 114 families (1,123 individuals) in order to construct a “King David’s Garden.”

We then walked up to Batan al-Hawa, another Silwan neighborhood targeted area by extremist Jewish settlers. This effort has been organized by Ateret Cohanim, an organization seeking to create a Jewish majority in East Jerusalem and the Muslim Quarter of the Old City. (Take a close look at the pic below and see if you can spot the home occupied by Jewish settlers):

In some cases, families are evicted for adding on to their homes without a building permit (which are almost never issued to Palestinians). In other cases, Ateret Cohanim does research to see if any of the homes or buildings were owned by Jews prior to 1948; if so, they use legal means to “reclaim” Jewish ownership. (Perversely ironic considering the Absentee Property Law of 1950 invoked in Al Bustan argues exactly the opposite: that Palestinians expelled from their homes in 1948 forfeit the right to return to their homes).

Zuheir took us through the increasingly narrow streets of Batan al-Hawa, taking time to show one such home, a building with several units. All have been taken over by Jewish families except for one. The new Jewish residents have put a large metal door in the main entrance so the Palestinian family must ask the Jewish residents to open the door for them each time they need to enter or exit. The small number of settlers hire armed security guards to accompany them wherever they go – during the course of the day it was impossible to ignore these men with their wearing bullet proof vests walking up and down the streets of Silwan.

The situation at another home was even more dismal. The original owners, the Abu Nab family, had lived in the building since 1948, after their family was expelled from their home in present day West Jerusalem. Last year, it was ruled that Jewish settlers could take over the building because it was discovered that a Yemenite Jewish family owned it in the 19th century. As Zuheir showed us the front of the home, a large armored van pulled up and two security guards came around. An ultra-orthodox woman holding a baby with a toddler at her side got quickly out the van and walked quickly into the home with the guards following close by.

Most of the Abu Nab family have left the home except for a remnant that lives in a small structure at the rear of the building. Since that time, the settler family has thrown garbage down on and around their home and knocked their satellite dish off of their roof. In order to enter and exit the building, they must go up a small ladder in the rear of a home two houses away (first pic below), cross the roof of the home next door, then go down a long ladder to the ground where their small house is located (second pic below).

CJNV and All That’s Left had been asked to help the the Abu Nab family and their neighbors to clean up the area around their home – so for the rest of the afternoon we worked with them to haul garbage out of the site under the watchful eyes of the settlers and their security guards. In the clip below, taken and narrated by CJNV staff Shlomo Roth, you’ll get a good idea of how we spent our afternoon:

That evening, we engaged in another form of “Existence is Resistance.” In conversations with Zuheir and other leaders in Silwan, it was determined that we should take the opportunity of our visit to help the Batan al-Hawa neighborhood organize a block party in front of the Abu Nab home. The community felt that a party would be just the thing, given the day to day stress of eviction and dispossession constantly hanging over their heads. It would also give the children of the neighborhood the opportunity to run free and play – something they rarely do because of the narrow streets and intimidating presence of the armed security guards.

So while many of us were helping clean up the Abu Nab home, others from our group helped decorate the street with balloon and signs, chairs and tables. Then, as evening fell, our revels began. (See clip at the top of the post and below):

I think many in our delegation would agree that the Batan al-Hawa block party was one of the emotional high points of a trip that had many such moments. On the one hand it felt like a normal everyday party with children running, laughing and dancing, plenty of food, great music blasting. But during it all I was keenly aware that this “normal” party was nothing of the sort – it was something that rarely, if ever occurs in the oppressed environs of Silwan. Given the injustice inflicted every day on the residents of Silwan, even an ordinary party is itself a form of civil resistance.

About halfway through the party, we saw three men hauling something large wending their way through the crowd. As they got closer I could see it was the broken-off satellite dish we had hauled up out of the garbage piled next to the Abu Nab home. We placed it up against a wall at the end of the block. The dish was now a piece of art. Festively painted with a green and yellow peace sign, it bore the message: “Welcome to Batan al-Hawa”- “We Love Silwan.”