In Jerusalem neighbourhood, politics & archaeology collide

Israel says it’s reconnecting with its ancient heritage. Palestinians contend the archaeology is a political weapon to undermine their own links to Jerusalem.

Lying on a densely-populated slope outside the walled Old City, the area is known to Israelis as the City of David, named for the legendary monarch who ruled a Jewish kingdom from this spot 3,000 years ago. It is the kernel from which Jerusalem grew.

But Silwan is in east Jerusalem, which Israel captured from Jordan in 1967 and which Palestinians claim for the capital of a future state.

Palestinians and Israelis are trying again to negotiate a peace deal, one which must include an agreement to share Jerusalem. The collision in this neighbourhood — between Silwan and the City of David — encapsulates the complexities ahead.

The organisation funding the digs, the Elad Foundation, is associated with the religious settlement movement and is committed to preventing Israel from ever ceding the area in a peace deal. It says it has a yearly budget of close to US$10 million (euro6.8 million), nearly all of it from donations, and is buying up Palestinian homes in Silwan to accommodate Jewish families. Around 50 have moved in so far, living in houses flying Israeli flags and guarded by armed securitymen paid for by the Israeli government.

At the same time, the City of David digs have expanded through the neighbourhood, carried out by respected Israeli government archaeologists with funding from Elad.

Fakhri Abu Diab, a Palestinian activist in the neighborhood, said the Elad Foundation had made it clear that he and his neighbours were in the way. Elad denies having any intention of driving out Silwan’s Palestinians. “There will always be Jews and Arabs living together here,” said Doron Spielman, Elad’s international director of development. Dozens of Silwan Arabs are employed by Elad, he said, and the foundation’s activities include neighbourhood beautification projects which improve life for Palestinian residents.

The Old Testament books of Kings and Chronicles recount the tunnel’s origins: Hezekiah, king of Judea, dug it to channel water inside the city walls ahead of a siege by Assyrian armies.

Roni Reich of Haifa University, another City of David archaeologist, gives voice to the history pulsing through Jerusalem, reeling off the names of history’s giants associated with the city —David, Jesus, the Roman Emperor Constantine, the Muslim ruler Saladin.

“It’s hard to list another city similar to this one,” he said. “And this hill is where it all started.” Archaeologists not connected to the City of David digs don’t dispute their importance.

Amihai Mazar, a professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, said the site had already revealed important details of Jerusalem’sz history. “This site doesn’t stop surprising us,” Mazar said.