Sitting beneath a tree beside the rubble of his demolished home, Fakhri Abu Diab stared out over what remained of the neighborhood where he has spent his whole life.

The 62-year-old Palestinian resident of al-Bustan, a densely packed warren of homes and small shops in East Jerusalem’s Silwan neighborhood, now lives with his wife in a temporary metal structure erected beside the ruins of his family home, which was demolished by Israeli authorities in 2024. Several months ago, he received a demolition order for that structure, too.

“My family has been here for generations,” Abu Diab said quietly, gesturing toward the broken concrete and twisted metal scattered around him. “I stayed here next to my land, next to my ruins, next to my history. And now they want to destroy this, too.”

Abu Diab has become one of the neighborhood’s best-known voices, fielding calls from media outlets around the world as international attention has focused on reports — not all accurate — about Israel’s plans to clear out al-Bustan.

Sitting directly below the Temple Mount and adjacent to the City of David archaeological park, al-Bustan occupies some of the most politically sensitive land in Jerusalem.

In recent months, media outlets have reported that homeowners are being forced to dismantle their homes to make room for a biblical-themed tourist park intended to strengthen Israeli historical claims while undermining Palestinian ones. It’s a story that, for some, sounds like a poignant symbol of what critics view as efforts to displace Palestinians from East Jerusalem.

For Israel’s courts, Jerusalem municipal officials and several right-wing activists who spoke to The Times of Israel on background, however, the main story is something else: a long-overdue decision to remove unauthorized construction on land designated for public use.

“The zoning of the area where structures were built without permits and unlawfully in the Al-Bustan neighborhood is designated for a public park for the benefit of all city residents,” the Jerusalem municipality explained in a statement to The Times of Israel.

“This area was never zoned for residential use, and the Jerusalem Municipality is currently working to establish a park and public parking lots in an area suffering from a severe shortage of open public spaces and parking.”

The city has yet to publish plans for the area since 2010, when then-mayor Nir Barkat proposed redeveloping the area into a park that would restore it “to its historic state as a major world and tourism site,” alongside the preservation of some neighborhood homes.

Nonetheless, a source inside the municipality said reports in the international press describing plans for the area as a biblical theme park were “a complete lie.”

Evictions of Palestinian residents from Sheikh Jarrah, other parts of Silwan and elsewhere have drawn intense international criticism. In a charged dispute over competing historical narratives, it can seem at times that the only thing all parties can agree on is that the situation has been sorely mismanaged.

Now, with Israel ramping up evictions and demolitions in the 70-dunam (17-acre) tract at the foot of the Kidron Valley, tiny al-Bustan has become the latest flashpoint in a long-running fight over what parts of Jerusalem’s history will play a role in determining its future.

Green space to urban enclave

Al-Bustan — Arabic for “the garden” — sits in a narrow valley directly below hillsides that rise toward the Old City and the Temple Mount, one of the most politically sensitive areas in Israel. Adjacent to the neighborhood is the City of David archaeological site, home to ruins dating back to the city’s Iron Age origins.

Sloping down the hill toward the biblical Pool of Siloam, where ancient Jerusalem drew its water, some archaeologists believe the lush sliver of land that al-Bustan sits on was once the royal garden of Israel’s earliest kings. Its location at the basin of several surrounding mountain ridges makes it one of the most fertile spaces in the city, irrigated by water runoff from multiple directions.

Today, the neighborhood is packed with ramshackle buildings, narrow roads and piles of rubble from homes that have already been demolished. But before Israel captured East Jerusalem during the 1967 war, the valley looked very different, preserved as a green space and used for farming vegetables, dates and pomegranates. Save for three or four permanent structures, the land was dedicated solely to agriculture, records show.

But Silwan and other areas in East Jerusalem saw their populations grow rapidly in the years after the war, and municipal planners failed to approve new housing projects to keep up with demand. Housing became........

© The Times of Israel