On April 15, 2026, Saleh (Abu Kamel) Dweik received a call from his neighbor alerting him that his house was about to be demolished by the Jerusalem Municipality.

The 77-year-old rushed to the al-Bustan area of Silwan and pushed his way through the police-barricaded streets to reach his home.

“I told them, ‘No matter what you do, this is still my house, this is still my place. You can demolish it, but it’s still mine, it’s not yours, it’s not the municipality’s. It’s still going to be my place,’” Dweik recalled to Jerusalem Story.1

Once the bulldozers finished flattening his home, Dweik sat on an overturned bucket next to the rubble in shock and despair and told the municipal officials, “I have no place to go. I’m going to be here, and this is where I’m going to be.”

Dweik’s home is one of eight that have been demolished since the beginning of April 2026.2 Since October 7, 2023, the Jerusalem Municipality has demolished 47 homes in al-Bustan.3 This is the highest number of demolitions in the neighborhood on record, according to Ir Amim, an Israeli rights group tracking geopolitical developments in Jerusalem.4

The remaining 80 to 90 Palestinian homes in al-Bustan are at high risk of demolition as well. The municipality intends to build the so-called King’s Garden, a biblically themed tourist archaeological park named after the Jewish figure of King David, as well as adjacent parking lots atop the ruins of houses belonging to 1,550 Palestinians.5 The park will connect to the City of David tourist site run by the Elad settler organization.6

Al-Bustan, located in the valley of Silwan south of al-Aqsa Mosque, has been under threat of complete erasure since 2005 when the municipal plan for the park was presented. However, the neighborhood had been largely spared (see Home Demolitions Spike in East Jerusalem as Ongoing War Averts Attention) thanks to an extended demolition freeze that residents secured through a combination of negotiations with the municipality and international pressure on the city to develop a zoning plan for the neighborhood.

Despite these efforts, and especially since October 7, 2023, the municipality has halted negotiations with the residents to advance a fair housing solution while continuing to carry out demolitions.

The demolitions increased even more in 2026, when the municipality began issuing confiscation and demolition orders using local bylaws. In January 2026, the municipality issued two so-called gardening and parking orders covering approximately six dunams (1.5 acres) of private land in al-Bustan—land that is now empty because the municipality demolished the homes that once stood there. Under the municipal bylaw, the city can confiscate privately owned land for a public garden or parking lot if it deems the area a “vacant lot.” In this way, the municipality prevents reconstruction of the homes.7

Alongside these orders, in January 2026, the municipality delivered 17 more demolition orders to residents in al-Bustan. The orders notified residents their homes would be razed after Ramadan8 for their alleged construction without permits.9 This was the case for the Dweik family, who bought their home in 1998. In fact, and unbeknownst to residents, the city considers all buildings in al-Bustan “illegal,” because the area is not zoned for residential and commercial use. In 1967, following its occupation of East Jerusalem, Israel designated the area as “green space,” effectively prohibiting construction for conservation purposes.

It is virtually impossible for Palestinians to secure building permits in East Jerusalem.10 Thus, the majority of Palestinian homes there are built or renovated without requisite permits due to the high rate of application rejections. Many Palestinians simply cannot afford the costly application fee to then be rejected, reflecting the deep discrimination in the municipality’s building and planning regulations for East Jerusalem neighborhoods.11

In February 2026, municipal bulldozers entered al-Bustan without prior warning and began demolishing walls, fences, and gates belonging to residents under another bylaw called “Maintaining Order and Cleanliness,” which allows the mayor to order the removal of obstacles from public streets.12 The area where these structures are located is not considered a public street, however.13

As the demolitions were in progress, attorneys for the residents immediately filed a petition, and the judge granted a temporary freeze against these demolitions.14 According to lawyer Omar Simry, demolishing these structures without formal notice is illegal under Israeli law.

“According to the law, you can’t demolish by the bylaws,” Simry told Jerusalem Story. “You need to file a claim against the people and then the court can issue a demolition order, but a municipal inspector can’t come and give you a demolition order like that.”15

At the time of writing, lawyers are working on submitting an appeal to the Jerusalem District Court over the structures threatened by these bylaws. Yet Simry notes this does not actually save the homes in al-Bustan.

“There are a lot of demolition orders in al-Bustan that they can see through, because unfortunately, it’s legal under Israeli law, and we can do nothing about it,” Simry said. “This appeal won’t stop the demolition of the houses.”

Above al-Bustan and along the slopes of Silwan sits Batn al-Hawa, a nearby area where 95 Palestinians are also under threat of losing their homes. On March 25, 2026, Israeli forces stormed Batn al-Hawa and forcibly expelled 15 Palestinian families, totaling approximately 80 people, from their homes.16

“This is one of the largest evictions to take place in East Jerusalem in recent years, and most alarmingly, additional evictions in Silwan may happen soon,” Ir Amim researcher Aviv Tatarsky told Jerusalem Story.17

The surge in forcible expulsions is due to Israel’s Supreme Court denying the families’ right to appeal after losing their cases in the lower courts—meaning they have exhausted all legal avenues available to them.18

The expulsions are a result of lawsuits (see Hundreds of Palestinians in Jerusalem’s Silwan Neighborhood Face Forcible Home Expulsion) initiated by the Israeli settler group Ateret Cohanim. Using Israel’s 1970 Legal and Administrative Matters Law, Ateret Cohanim claims the Batn al-Hawa homes originally belong to the Benvenisti Trust, which the settler group took over in 2001.

The Benvenisti Trust was established in 1899 primarily to house Yemeni Jewish immigrants in Silwan, who then abandoned the area during the 1936–39 Great Palestinian Revolt. The 1970 law allows Jews—but not Palestinians—to claim ownership of land and property lost after 1948. This legislation is one of the main tools Israeli settlers use to displace Palestinians from East Jerusalem (see Settler State: Guide to the Israeli Settler Groups That Work to Dispossess Palestinians in Jerusalem).

Most of the families in Batn al-Hawa purchased the plots of land and built their homes on them before 1967, when East Jerusalem was under Jordanian rule. This means that title deeds to the land are Jordanian. While Israeli courts agree that the land was legally purchased, they ruled that Israel’s 1970 Legal and Administrative Matters Law endows the properties to Jews, which is why they must be handed over to them.

“We had hopes that we wouldn’t be expelled. We would not have gone to court for all these years with our proof of ownership unless we thought we could manage something with the courts and secure a favorable ruling,” Dr. Raed Basbous, who was displaced from the home where he was born and raised in March 2026, told Jerusalem Story.19

“Since the Gaza war, things have become more radical, more right-wing. Decisions are taken more quickly,” Basbous explained. “Part of it is that attention is going to the war, to Lebanon, to Iran, and cases like ours are not getting much attention. So the government moved very quickly to take this decision, which worked against us.”

In addition to the above cases, approximately 700 more residents in Batn al-Hawa face expulsion because of Ateret Cohanim’s lawsuits. Silwan is home to around 33,000 Palestinians.20 Together, the number of Palestinians facing imminent expulsion from both Batn al-Hawa and al-Bustan totals over 2,000.21

“The settlers are very ideological, and the ideology is anti-Palestinian,” Tatarsky explained.

Basbous’s family was displaced in 1948 from the village of al-Dawwara near Safad in 1948, when Zionist gangs expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes. Now, nearly eight decades later, they are being displaced again.

Mohamad Atiah Qudeir is also feeling the weight of being displaced again as demolition looms over his home in al-Bustan. His father, who passed away, built the home in 1970 after his family endured two decades of displacement.

“My mom was originally displaced from the area of Jaffa in 1948, and we came to the villages of Yalu and Imwas, and then we moved to the Old City in Jerusalem by the Jewish Quarter. After 1967, we were also displaced,” Qudeir told Jerusalem Story.23

He lives with his 97-year-old mother and 35-year-old son, who has special needs. Many of the residents in al-Bustan and Batn al-Hawa are elderly, disabled, or have long-term chronic illnesses.

“My son keeps asking me where we can go next. We don’t have the money to move and rent somewhere. Rent is expensive, and we have no place to go,” Qudeir said. “We’ve been living here since 1970, and we have no other place.”