US Backs Settler-Led Archaeological Tunnel Project in Jerusalem

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio attended the inaugural ceremony of a newly excavated tunnel in the City of David, a tourist site run by the far-right settler organization Elad in the heart of East Jerusalem’s Silwan neighborhood, during his recent visit to Jerusalem.1 The official American presence at the closed-door event on September 15, 2025, marked yet another endorsement from President Donald Trump’s administration of Israel’s expanding settler activity in Jerusalem aimed at Judaizing the city and the narrative that underpins it.2

Referred to by its settler funders as Pilgrims’ Road or Pilgrimage Road, the 600-meter-long tunnel begins in the Wadi Hilweh section of Silwan and runs under the Old City walls to the Western Wall, the most important Jewish holy site. Adjacent to al-Aqsa Mosque, this tunnel is part of the retaining structure of al-Haram al-Sharif, the third-most important religious site in Islam.3

It was the second time a US official has visited the tunnel project. In 2019, then US ambassador to Israel David Friedman attended the inauguration of another part of the tunnel.4

“That was the first time that a high-ranking foreign official came to the City of David,” Talya Ezrahi, international relations coordinator at Israeli archaeological rights group Emek Shaveh, told Jerusalem Story.5 “Trump’s America is the only [government] to break that taboo of visiting the City of David.”

Yonatan Mizrachi, Settlement Watch project codirector from Israeli activist group Peace Now, elaborated on this: “Coming to this tunnel in East Jerusalem is a political statement that the American administration [is] recognizing the presence of the settlers in Jerusalem—and supporting it as well."6

With government funding of around NIS 50 million (approx. $15 million), the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) has been excavating the tunnel since 2013 as a part of the City of David archaeological site.7 Elad, the Hebrew acronym for the settler group, claims the excavations, which reveal a Roman-era stepped street, served as a route for Jewish pilgrims to the Second Temple. Experts dispute this interpretation, saying there is no evidence to support the claim.8

Arguably, the archaeological site in Silwan is the most excavated area in the city of Jerusalem, with Western archaeologists beginning in the 1860s to search for the biblical Jebus or “City of David.” Today, however, most scholarship rejects a literal reading of biblical texts that places an ancient capital in Wadi Hilweh; evidence of such an important walled settlement in this location has been sparse if nonexistent. In the 1990s, right-wing elements in the government led by Benjamin Netanyahu, who was also prime minister from 1996 to 1999, took over the site and created a self-serving narrative. “I found a Byzantine water pit,” an excavator told Ir Amim, an Israeli organization that focuses on Jerusalem and advocates against settler control. “They [the settler managers of the site] said it was Jeremiah’s pit. I told him that was nonsense . . . Sometimes they make all kinds of things up.”9 Elad and the IAA have created a narrative around Pilgrims’ Road that it was the “main street of Jerusalem from the Second Temple period,”10 that is, the Herodian period, even though archaeologists that worked on the site question this dating.11

The excavations are done horizontally by tunneling, which archaeologists consider scientifically unsound compared to the stratigraphic method, whereby digging is done from the top down.

“When you’re excavating from the side, you’re isolating only a very narrow slice of archaeological strata,” Ezrahi told Jerusalem Story. “And in the science of archaeology, the context is just as important as the find. So if you don’t have the full context, then the excavation is reduced, and it tells you about what this excavation is actually for. It’s not for scientific research. The purpose of it is to create this tourist route, which very much serves the agenda of highlighting the City of David and the Second Temple and bolstering this narrative that this was Jewish back in the antiquities.”

In June–July 2025, the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory condemned Israel’s use of archaeology at the City of David, writing:

When Rubio was asked directly about Israeli settlements and settler violence, his response was noncommittal. “I think every day is going to bring opportunities, and it’s also going to bring some challenges, okay? We’re dealing with decades and decades of this stuff that every day is going to bring—every single day something is going to pop up that we need to fix, or it could harm this effort.” The US’s primary consideration appears to be advancing toward an international presence and outside governance in Gaza, now that a fragile ceasefire has been tenuously brokered.13

Despite lifting sanctions that the previous administration had placed on individual Israeli settlers, the Trump administration is opposing the annexation of the West Bank. “It won’t happen . . . Israel would lose all of its support from the United States if that happened,” President Donald Trump recently declared.14

Nevertheless, the administration did not block or oppose Israel’s August approval of the massive E1 plan, which will effectively sever the West Bank in half by building Israeli settlements in the heart of that occupied territory. Emphasizing then that its primary concern was brokering a ceasefire in Gaza, a State Department spokesperson said, “A stable West Bank keeps Israel secure and is in line with this administration’s goal to achieve peace in the region.”15

Fakhri Abu Diab, spokesperson for the Silwan neighborhood, called Rubio’s visit “intimidating” for the residents of Silwan.

“These [archaeological] tunnels are being dug for purely political reasons—to control more of the land and the area there,” Abu Diab told Jerusalem Story.16

He said that 32 houses in Wadi Hilweh have been affected by the excavations performed underneath their homes. Fissures and cracks have appeared in the walls, and floors have sunk. Construction noise disrupts residents’ usual activities. Some of the damage has even made the homes uninhabitable, prompting residents to contact the Israeli-run Jerusalem Municipality to repair the damage. The municipality promises to renovate, asking residents to evacuate, but repairs do not happen—and families are then unable to return to their homes.17

“I made a big mistake when I informed [the municipality] of the damage,” a member of the Awaida family in Wadi Hilweh told Emek Shaveh.18 “The result is I cannot return to my home, and while it stands empty, no one bothers to help me.”

Since 2009, many stores in the area and a girls’ school operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) have shuttered their doors due to damage from the excavations, Abu Diab said. In February that year, one of the school’s classrooms collapsed, injuring 14 children when they dropped into a 6-foot-deep hole. Excavations of Pilgrims’ Road were occurring just underneath the school.19 Large pits in the neighborhood’s streets have also formed above the excavations.20

“If [residents] complain, [the municipality] just tells them, ‘It’s a risky area and these structures are not stable anymore, and you cannot be there,’” Abu Diab said. “It’s affected the whole infrastructure of these houses and buildings and institutions in the area.”

The IAA has denied these excavations are the cause of the damage, telling Emek Shaveh in 2017 that it is carrying out the “project based on an engineering plan with ongoing engineering consultation, in adherence to safety regulations."21

“Does the American administration know of these families who have no right of knowing themselves what’s been done underneath [their homes]?” Abu Diab asked. “It is not conveyed to them what is happening underneath them, and they have no access to see the work that’s been done.”

Israeli government excavations underneath al-Aqsa Mosque have also appeared to damage structures in the area. In September 2025, the Palestinian Authority-led Jerusalem Governorate said leaked videos showed excavations happening below the mosque.22

“The occupation authorities are working to destroy these Islamic archaeological landmarks with the aim of obliterating the historical identity of al-Aqsa Mosque and distorting the facts,” the Jerusalem Governorate said in a statement.23

These excavations—from Silwan to the Old City—are seen as provocative and a flashpoint.

“According to the Palestinians, the tunnel excavation—although it began in Silwan—continues to the Western Wall [al-Haram al-Sharif] foundations. And they’re claiming that Israel is actually excavating underneath the Temple [al-Aqsa Mosque],” Mizrachi said. “And it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not, it creates a lot of tension between the Israelis and the Palestinians.”

The crux of the issue, Abu Diab emphasizes, is not the excavation per se but rather what the archaeology represents for the settlement movement.

“What we’re against is [obscuring] part of the history, which could be the Islamic period, and not just going back to the Old Testament [period],” Abu Diab said. “Whole organizations who are working in this archaeological digging are politically motivated and have one single view: to uncover what they think is important to them and not to others.”