Silwan Under the Guillotine of Displacement: Stories of Palestinians Forced to Demolish Their Homes with Their Own Hands in Jerusalem

The town of Silwan in occupied Jerusalem is facing one of the harshest systematic displacement campaigns, with demolition orders threatening about 150 Palestinian homes in the area. These measures come in the context of a frantic settlement expansion policy that enjoys direct government support, aiming to change the demographic character of the town, which is home to about 60,000 people.\n\nThe occupation authorities seek through these operations to clear the land for archaeological and settlement projects, foremost among them the expansion of what is called 'City of David'. Residents daily watch the occupation bulldozers devouring homes they spent decades building, only for the Israeli flag to be raised over their ruins, announcing the replacement of the original landowners with settlers.\n\nThese transformations are based on a legal system drafted by the occupation to facilitate control over properties, where Jews are allowed to claim properties they allege ownership of before 1948. In contrast, Palestinians find themselves unable to obtain legal building permits, making their homes 'illegal' in the eyes of Israeli law.\n\nAmin Jalajel, a 62-year-old Palestinian elder, embodies the tragedy of the town, having received an order to demolish the home where he was born and raised. Jalajel bitterly questions the logic of the occupation, which claims he lacks a building permit, while his presence in this house predates the laws that prosecute him today.\n\nThe Jalajel family, which once owned six homes in the neighborhood, now has only one roof left, sheltering 96 individuals from different generations. This suffocating overcrowding is a direct result of repeated demolition operations that affected the family's other properties, leaving them living in constant anticipation of what remains of their shelter.\n\nThe occupation places residents before two bitter choices: either self-demolition with their own hands, or waiting for army bulldozers and paying exorbitant demolition costs. These costs sometimes reach 100,000 shekels, an amount most residents cannot afford, forcing them to carry out the demolition themselves in a tragic human scene.\n\nAhmed, one of the Jalajel family's sons, recounts how the occupation financially drained him through exorbitant fines for alleged unlicensed construction before his home was eventually demolished. He asserts that the pressures do not stop at demolition but include continuous threats and attempts at financial inducement by settlement organizations to buy what remains of the land.\n\nIn another corner of Silwan, young Wassim Siyam (37 years old) was forced to turn his home into a pile of rubble with his own hands in compliance with an official order. Wassim lived in that house with his wife, five children, and his mother, who suffers from difficult health conditions, only to suddenly find themselves homeless.\n\nSiyam says that the occupation authorities do not adhere to any humanitarian standards, as they do not consider the need of children or the sick for housing. He believes that the sole purpose of these policies is to provide comfort and luxury for settlers at the expense of the hell of Palestinian families who are forcibly expelled from their homes.\n\nField reports indicate that the pace of these violations has significantly accelerated since 2022 with the far-right government taking power. The number of settlers in the West Bank and Jerusalem has risen to about half a million, amid official blessing for building more settlement units despite international condemnation.\n\nThe suffering is not limited to the loss of walls but extends to include control over natural resources and historical sites in the town, such as water springs that have become exclusive to settlers. Residents describe what is happening as a 'silent erasure' of Palestinian identity, where legal, economic, and psychological pressures are used to push them towards voluntary departure.\n\n"Either we demolish our house ourselves, or we pay 100,000 shekels for the army to demolish it"; a choice that encapsulates the extent of the coercion we live under.