Israel’s ‘Bible Trail’: Demolishing Palestinian homes to make national parks

MIDDLE EAST EYE  – On the planning map of Jerusalem, the aerial view of Aref Totanji’s home is obscured by green ink, part of a swath of colour besieging the walls of the Old City on every side.

Over the past decade, these coloured zones have spread over the map of East Jerusalem, creating a patchwork that engulfs ever more Palestinian neighbourhoods close to the Old City.

The green ink may look innocuous on paper, but for 50-year-old Totanji it signals the impending arrival of bulldozers to demolish his one-storey house, leaving the family of 16 – including a seven-month-old granddaughter – homeless.

As Israeli authorities declare “national parks” over residential areas, thousands of Palestinians living in overcrowded neighbourhoods close by Jerusalem’s Old City are being trapped in a similar planning nightmare.

Planners and human-rights group accuse the Israeli authorities of increasingly using such parks as a tool to grab control of Palestinian land and demolish homes, under the guise of archaeological preservation and tourism development.

Enass Masri, a field researcher for Bimkom, a group of planning experts helping Palestinians negotiate Israel’s labyrinthine planning system, said the goal of national parks in Israel was to protect green spaces and heritage sites but that this policy had gone awry. 

“Uniquely in East Jerusalem, the national parks include residential areas,” she told Middle East Eye. “They are a monster making these families’ lives a misery.”

Nowhere to go

A court order written in Hebrew – a language Totanji does not understand – demands that the family vacate their four-room house by 10 April. He lost an appeal last month.

“It’s not just a house that is being destroyed but my whole life,” he told MEE.

“When the soldiers came recently to warn me to move my belongings out before they begin work on the demolition, I asked them: “Where am I supposed to move them to? We have nowhere else to go.”

CONTINUE READING