Archaeology has always seemed an innocuous and worthy cause, a means by which humankind can reach into the past and learn, touch, and view the lives of those separated from us by centuries.
Until now, that is, as the Palestinian residents of Silwan, located just outside Jerusalem’s Old City walls, have discovered.
According to the writer and journalist Jonathan Cook, in his latest piece for the Electronic Intifada, “at least 50 Jewish families, comprising 250 people, have taken over Palestinian homes dotted across Silwan…backed by private donors from abroad, [they] hope to make a peace agreement impossible and so ensure East Jerusalem never becomes the capital of a Palestinian state.”
Utilising funds emanating from shadowy backers in the United States and Russia, an organisation known as ElAd is transforming Silwan into the “City of David”, complete with signposts that fail to acknowledge the existence of Silwan and its thousands of inhabitants.
The crux of the problem lies in an archaeological park that is meandering into Silwan, with cracks emerging in walls and residents fearing that their foundations have been damaged, after excavations began last year to unearth a drainage channel speculated to date back to the era of King Herod.
Cook continues:
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.
For now, it seems that even the foundations of centuries gone by are not safe from the cold, cruel tentacles of modern-day politics.
To find out more, the full report can be read here, or watch the following elucidating documentary on Silwan, Digging for Trouble.
[Image via: Meged Gozani.]
Filed under: Conflict Zones, Israel, Middle East, Palestine , archaeology, Israel, Jerusalem, Middle East, Palestine
Is it not true that more spacious alternative homes are sometimes purchased by the Elad and offered to the Arabs in newer neighborhoods such as Beit Hanina?
Isn’t it not so Silwan was Yeminite Jew settlement until they were driven out by the Arabs in 1938?
Hmm?
Thank you, Joel, for your comment – it is indeed interesting, and would be ameliorated by some sources.