Word: silwan
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Late on a chilly October evening in 1991, Jewish settlers commandeered 11 buildings in Silwan and dug in. The case went to Israel's Supreme Court and Ariel Sharon, then Construction Minister (and later Prime Minister), rallied to the settlers' defense, arguing that "it is the policy of the government of Israel to encourage Jewish residence in Jerusalem." The settlers were allowed to stay, and Elad began building its presence in Silwan. The Israeli government turned over its property to the settlers, and Elad bought up Arab homes through intermediaries. Today, more than 500 settlers, along with Uzi-toting security...
With official Israeli backing, Elad has ambitions beyond Silwan. Lawyer Seidemann claims that since mid-2008, the Israeli government has accelerated a policy of "aggressively and covertly expanding and consolidating control over Silwan and the historic basin surrounding the Old City." The plan, he says, involves "the take-over of the public domain and Palestinian private property ... accelerated planning and approval of projects, and the establishment of a network of a series of parks and sites steeped in and serving up exclusionary, fundamentalist settler ideology." In its essence, the plan places a large area of Arab Jerusalem under Jewish control...
...supposed to dig for six weeks and then report on what you find. In the City of David, they've been digging nonstop for two years without a satisfactory report," Greenberg says. He accuses Elad of using archaeology as a "crowbar" to "throw out the Palestinians living in Silwan and turn it into a Jewish place...
...overseen by the IAA, and its director, ex-General Shuka Dorfman explained to TIME that while Elad manages and funds more than a dozen digs around Jerusalem, an IAA archaeologist is always on-site to analyze findings. Dorfman concedes that the settler organization's interpretation of its findings in Silwan "is different from ours." He adds: "They emphasize only the Jewish heritage." Sometimes, according to archaeologist Mizrahi, the Elad-sponsored digs ignore other strata of Jerusalem's multi-cultural history. "They're only focusing on one tradition - the Jewish one," he says...
...projects threaten Jerusalem's peace as much as that at Silwan. In 2007, Arabs there began hearing strange banging under their homes "like an earthquake," one resident recalls. Soon, cracks opened up in the floors and snaked up the walls. The Silwan residents protested against the settlers' tunneling, without the necessary permits or safeguards. "All that happened was that the police arrested us," complains Jawan Siyam, a Silwan local. Elad was opening up a 650 yd.-long (600 m) drainage tunnel, running under Arab homes, that Elad claims dates back 2,000 years, and may have been used by Jewish...