Palestinian residents of Al-Bustan are in a race against time as Israeli authorities move to level the neighborhood by October 2026, displacing 1,500 people in what rights groups describe as the largest wave of forced displacement in occupied East Jerusalem since 1967.
The demolition of all 115 Palestinian homes in the Al-Bustan section of Silwan district is intended to clear the area for the so-called “King’s Garden,” a biblically themed tourist park. The project will expand the adjacent Wadi Hilweh archaeological site, managed by the settler organization Elad, according to +972 Magazine.
This campaign intensified in mid-April, when Israeli bulldozers destroyed two residential buildings on the same day that residents and their lawyers were in court attempting to freeze the orders.
Fakhri Abu Diab, head of the local residents’ committee, who lost his own home to Israeli demolitions in 2024, confirmed the October timeline last month following a visit by foreign diplomats to the ruins of the neighborhood.
The pressure has forced many families into the psychological and financial trauma of self-demolition. Out of the 40 Palestinian homes destroyed across occupied East Jerusalem in April, 17 were demolished by the inhabitants themselves, +972 Magazine reports. This move is often a desperate attempt to avoid the “demolition fees” levied by the Israeli authorities, which can reach tens of thousands of shekels ($1 is around 3 shekels).
The current campaign is the revival of a 2004 municipal plan that was stalled for two decades due to international diplomatic pressure. Israeli authorities maintain that Al-Bustan is a “public open space” where residential construction is prohibited.
However, Palestinian residents argue that the “illegal” status of their homes is a manufactured legal trap. For decades, Israeli authorities have systematically refused to issue building permits to Palestinians in East Jerusalem, while simultaneously facilitating the expansion of illegal Jewish settlements in the same neighborhoods.
The looming erasure of Al-Bustan has drawn the attention of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). In a briefing earlier this year, spokesperson Thameen Al-Kheetan warned that the “unlawful deportation or transfer of a population living under occupation constitutes a war crime.”
The OHCHR further noted that such systematic displacement, particularly when paired with the parallel eviction campaigns by settler groups in nearby Batn Al Hawa, may amount to crimes against humanity.
