"this struggle isn't just for the right to return, it is for the right to stay"

sorry can't make this look pretty right now.

police station that used to be a palestinian home.
wailing wall, used to be much more.

our guide shows us a home in the middle of the old city, one block from al aqsa, that is lived in for one week a year. (right) the front door, obvious arab architecture, israeli flag flying

tunnel being dug beneath palestinian homes

today i had a few meetings cancel, unfortunately, but i did have the opportunity to take a "tour" of the Old City looking at house demolition and settlements. it was through the centre for jerusalem studies http://www.jerusalem-studies.alquds.edu/. just when you think that things cant get worse, they do. our guide explained to us that there is a strategy of occupation of the old city (historically palestinian) that really began in 1967. until recently (1967) the jewish quarter of jerusalem was only 15 dunums (close to 30 acres). there has been a process of forced removal of palestinian families for the past 40 years. part of this means that they "buy" houses, and in this case a palestinian family may be victims of threats, violence, and repeated harassment until they "sell" their house. i use parentheses here because according to our guide, all land in the old city belongs to the Waqf, a sort of religious organization that controls the buying and selling of land, much like in the vatican. this means that they have to give approval of the selling of the house, and there has never been that approval. the settlers buy the house from the family amd move in with the OFFICIAL protection of the israeli army. in fact, many houses are symbolic statements, the settlers only live there for one or two weeks a year, at most. but some are more permanent. some settlers buy one room and demolish a wall of their neighboring house, and slowly consume a larger area. these are not isolated cases, it ahppens all the time. we went into a building where this has happened just two months ago, pictures below. some of the settlements are driven by skewed ideology that there is a historic connection with the land and judaism. but the small wailing wall, picture below, is an example where fundamentalist ideology has not been supported not even in a fragment by archeology, and is dubious even by other less radical interpretations of jewish history.

where the wailing wall is today there were 135 palestinian houses, two mosques, and one bakery. as you can see from the photo, now there is nothing. some of the houses for 8 centuries old.

a radical group called the ateret cohanim http://www.ateret.org.il/new/home.php has been effective in raising money internationally to aggressively occupy houses and expand in the old city. they are one of the most vicious groups in the area. we went to the sayara center, whose building neighbors that of a building recently occupied throught the help of ateret cohanim. the sayara center is committed to providing trainings to women and children in the old city. next door is a "reform" school for criminals, violent people, and drug addicts to be taught in the orthodox ways of judaism. apparently this is quite common in the settlements in the old city. there are two types - schools or homes. the schools are often of this kind, and it is thought that they are done intentionally to place dangerous and violent people into the palestinian areas. at the sayara center we went to the bottom floor where two months ago the director of the organization went to get his morning coffee

and found two settlers walking around in it. he called the police. it turns out that they had destroyed the door and were attempting to come into and confiscate the building. when we were there two children yelled at us from their window, saying we were "arab-fucking dogs" and they motioned at us like guns and cutting throats.

from there we walked through what seemed like endless markets. when we ended we went onto the roof and we were told that every house on the roof of the markets that we had just walked through belonged to settlers now.