"It was like being given the choice between suicide or being murdered" Palestinians forced to demolish own homes to make way for Israeli theme park. Residents of al-Bustan district told to make way for Kings Garden, with knocking down own houses cheaper option

‘This is something bitter,’ said Jalal al-Tawil as his family’s home was demolished. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian

Julian Borger, Quique Kierszenbaum and Sufian Taha in Jerusalem

Sat 16 May 2026 03.00 EDT

 

At the bottom of a steep and densely populated valley just below Jerusalem’s old city walls, the earth has been shaken in recent weeks by jackhammers and bulldozers.

These have been the sounds of Jerusalem for decades as the Israeli state has relentlessly sought to stamp a uniformly Jewish identity on to the occupied east of the city, while erasing its Palestinian character.

Typically it is workers for the state and municipality at the wheel of the bulldozers, but in the al-Bustan neighbourhood, in the shadow of the 11th-century al-Aqsa mosque, the clamour is from a more recent development.

It is the sound of Palestinians demolishing their own family homes.

Al-Bustan: red dots mark homes already demolished and green those with existing demolition orders.

“This is something really hard. This is something bitter,” Jalal al-Tawil said as he watched a tractor he had hired, with a front loader at the front and jackhammer at the back, rip apart the last remnants of the house his father had built, which in turn had been on the site of his grandparents’ home.

By Wednesday morning, most of the walls had been brought down to their foundations and the rubble pushed into a single pile. Al-Tawil left the thick knotty root of a 35-year-old grapevine until last.

“It used to provide grapes for all of al-Bustan,” he said. The spring vine leaves had already sprouted along the trellis above him, but he was resigned to the fact they would never again bear fruit.... READ MORE   https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/16/palestinians-demolish-family-homes-jerusalem-kings-garden-theme-park

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