Silwan

Private security guards kill with impunity in East Jerusalem

According to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, 350 private Israeli security guards are currently employed in East Jerusalem by private security firm Modi’in Ezrahi, which is subcontracted by the Israeli Ministry of Housing and Construction, to protect 2,000 settlers living illegally in the occupied territory. 

Under the beautiful valley



While the world’s eyes are riveted to the diplomatic arguments over Israel’s settlement facts on the ground, Israel is covertly tightening its grip on Wadi Hilweh and al-Bustan neighborhoods in Silwan in a literally underground fashion. Danny Felsteiner writes from occupied East Jerusalem. 

You have to imagine what it feels like



We are in the city of David, literally—the oldest part of Jerusalem, below the Temple Mount, not far from the Siloam Tunnel carved in the living rock, almost three millennia ago, by King Hezekiah. Today they call it Silwan: some 50,000 Palestinian Jerusalemites live here, nearly all with blue Jerusalem identity-cards. A few days ago the municipality stuck demolition notices on 88 houses in this neighborhood; some 1000 innocent people are about to lose everything. The ostensible rationale is the creation of an archaeological park in the heart of this Arab quarter.