The story of the erasure of Palestinians is bookended by an irrepressible force: It features excavators and bulldozers escorted by police officers who arrive early in the morning, demolishing homes that have been inhabited by Palestinian families for decades. In East Jerusalem and its immediate suburb, which was annexed by force in 1980, colonization advances day by day under the relentless blows of machinery and the frustration of courthouses, house by house, neighborhood by neighborhood, to make more room for Jewish families at the expense of Palestinian families.
Fakhri Abu Diab, a 64-year-old accountant and translator, spoke emotionally in front of the walnut tree he planted with his mother when he was a young boy, in the heart of Silwan, a city of 60,000 residents near Jerusalem’s holy sites. That was before 1967, before Israel began its occupation of East Jerusalem following its victory over neighboring Arab states in the Six-Day War. The walnut tree remains his last memory of that time. The family home is now only a pile of rubble – a mix of twisted metal, crushed furniture, destroyed memories and concrete.
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