There is the loud din of a demolition below Jerusalem's walled Old City, and from a hillside I watch a large Israeli excavator tearing into a Palestinian house. "There is no future. They destroyed the future and everything else," says Fayez Awad, 58, who is sitting in the only remaining floor of his property when I reach him. "We spent our whole lives building this house. This is all we managed to achieve in life."
For some 20 years, Israel's Jerusalem Municipality has pursued plans to turn al-Bustan into a biblically-themed park, the King's Garden, to be run by a Jewish settler organisation. Recently, demolition orders enforced by Israeli courts have accelerated along the narrow streets here. Half of the homes here have now been demolished. Many residents facing demolition orders are opting to take sledgehammers to their own properties to avoid hefty costs and fines imposed by the municipality which typically total tens of thousands of dollars. |
