AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Israeli Jewish settlers continue to push Palestinians from their homes and their land where many have lived for generations. The process has accelerated under the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu. His Cabinet includes two ministers who are settlers themselves. The settlements are happening in the occupied West Bank as well as in East Jerusalem, where the government is using archaeology to justify its orders. NPR's Eleanor Beardsley tells us more.
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: I walk with Israeli Brit Angela Godfrey-Goldstein, who co-runs a nonprofit to prevent forcible demolitions. She shows me where Jewish settlers are steadily building in Silwan, an old Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem, just outside the city walls.
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ANGELA GODFREY-GOLDSTEIN: Now look inside here. This is also a settlement. And by the way, you see, there's a lot of surveillance cameras. Look, they lived a fine life - everything very well-tended, lots of water used, gardening.
BEARDSLEY: The Palestinian cinder block homes that spill down the hillsides are being demolished to make way for this settlement called the City of David, which includes an archaeological site and biblical theme park.
GODFREY-GOLDSTEIN: But it's a horrible, sinister cause of pain for so many people.
(SOUNDBITE OF GATE OPENING)
FAHKRI ABU DIAB: Hi. Hey, how are you?
BEARDSLEY: Fine. How are you?
One of those people is Fahkri Abu Diab, born here in 1962, five years before Israel captured East Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan and began controlling the lives of millions of Palestinians on land technically not part of Israel.
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BEARDSLEY: We step through his gate into a small courtyard. There are geese and a massive mound of rubble. It's his mother's home where Abu Diab grew up, demolished by Israeli authorities two years ago because he didn't have a permit for additions to the house, which he says are impossible for Palestinians to get. Abu Diab still lives here with his wife in a small trailer he set up next to the rubble.
ABU DIAB: I want to be close of my memories, my home. They said that's not allowed. Why? They not want anything here because they want to catch the land and to make cars parking and gardens for the settlers. You know, they have a political agenda, and they want to demolish the all and tell us, go outside of this area, and to take this, our neighborhood.
BEARDSLEY: By using a range of tools - zoning, the courts and archaeology - the Israeli government is turning this Palestinian Arab neighborhood into a Jewish one, says Sarit Michaeli, with Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem.
SARIT MICHAELI: That's basically the process of Judaization that we have seen again and again in East Jerusalem. A very discriminatory, rigged legal system has enabled settlers to remove a huge number of Palestinian families, bring in Israeli Jewish settlers to live in these properties.
BEARDSLEY: The Jerusalem city council told NPR these evictions are aimed at returning property to its original Jewish owners. But Israeli archaeologist Yonatan Mizrachi, with the advocacy organization Peace Now, says settlers are trying to prove God promised Jews this land.
YONATAN MIZRACHI: It's kind of making the biblical stories for physical evidence.
BEARDSLEY: He says there are churches, mosques, archaeology from many cultures and religions here, dating back thousands of years.
MIZRACHI: This is the story of Israel Palestine. People come and go. So you have everything everywhere.
BEARDSLEY: Mizrachi says it's all about who controls the narrative, and this site is run by settlers.
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SARAH KAPLAN: Very important. (Speaking Hebrew).
BEARDSLEY: Orthodox Jew Sarah Kaplan is visiting this site where Palestinians have been evicted to make way for the King David Garden and archaeological dig. She's here with her husband and seven children.
KAPLAN: (Speaking Hebrew).
BEARDSLEY: "There are artifacts found here proving the children of Israel entered the land of Israel and conquered it thousands of years ago," she says.
(SOUNDBITE OF GATE CHAIN RATTLING)
OMAR ABU RAJAB: (Speaking Arabic).
BEARDSLEY: Not a hundred yards away, 60-year-old Omar Abu Rajab closes up his sheep pen and walks up to the second floor of his tiny home, which is now lopped off and open to the sky.
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BEARDSLEY: Israeli authorities ordered him to demolish, and like many here, to avoid costly bulldozer fees, Abu Rajab is tearing down his house with his own hands.
ABU RAJAB: (Through interpreter) My heart is broken. It's extremely hard, but I can do nothing. We have complained to the whole world. To everybody, it's like a film. It's we who suffer.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Singing in Arabic).
BEARDSLEY: As we speak, the call to prayer rings out over Silwan, led by Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque, one of Islam's holiest sites. Last week, Israel issued eviction orders targeting seven apartments where more than 50 people from one extended family live. They have until May 17 to evacuate before their homes will also be demolished. Eleanor Beardsley, NPR News, East Jerusalem.
(SOUNDBITE OF RENEE AUBRY'S "WATER FALLS") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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