LONDON: Israeli police reportedly entered a home in Silwan this week while searching for suspects in a family dispute. Instead, authorities said they found a nearly 2,000-year-old burial chamber beneath the Palestinian family’s residence.
Israeli media, including The Jerusalem Post, reported that the Israel Antiquities Authority identified the tomb as dating to the Second Temple period, between 516 B.C. and 70 A.D. The chamber reportedly includes narrow burial niches known in Hebrew as “kokhim.”
For the Palestinian family living above it, however, the discovery raises concerns about what comes next, particularly as Silwan residents have long faced demolitions, land confiscations, evictions and restrictions on construction by Israeli authorities.
The tomb was reportedly discovered during a police investigation into a violent clash between two feuding families in the Ein Al-Lozeh area of Silwan on Aug. 22.
Three Palestinians were killed, including two who were shot by Israeli police, according to Israeli and Palestinian media reports, and one, Essam Al-Awar, who was allegedly shot by a member of the Abbasi family.
For many people in Silwan, the violence was the latest trauma in a neighborhood shaped for decades by overlapping struggles over land, housing, archaeological claims and control of Jerusalem’s historical narrative.
Fakhri Abu Diab, a community leader, walks by the remains of his family home, after it was destroyed by Israeli forces, in Siwan. (Reuters)
Fakhri Abu Diab, a Jerusalem affairs researcher, activist and spokesman for Silwan residents, said Israeli authorities and affiliated organizations have “heavily targeted” the Palestinian neighborhood for years.
He cited the Jerusalem Municipality, settler organizations, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and the Israel Antiquities Authority as among the bodies active in the area.
“The focus on this area is tied to the belief that it was the site of Jerusalem’s earliest settlement,” Abu Diab told Arab News. “Because of that, it contains archaeological remains that are presented as evidence of an original Jewish identity.”
He said settler organizations had carried out numerous excavations and dug tunnels beneath the area, while Israeli policies extended beyond properties directly associated with archaeological sites.
“Even in places where there are no archaeological remains, homes are demolished,” he said. “The goal is to alter the demographic balance by increasing the number of Israeli settlers at the expense of Palestinian residents.”
Silwan, just south of Jerusalem’s Old City, is home to about 20,000 Palestinian residents, according to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem. The neighborhood lies within the area often called the Holy Basin, and its proximity to Al-Aqsa Mosque and significant archaeological sites has made it central to competing Palestinian and Israeli claims over the city.
B’Tselem said in a March report that Israel has used Silwan’s archaeological and historical importance to support planning and zoning policies that limit Palestinian development while strengthening Israeli control of the area.
Abu Diab said Palestinian residents face a shortage of approved planning schemes, building permits and municipal services despite paying municipal taxes.
The lack of permits leaves many families with little choice but to expand existing homes or construct new ones on land they own, he said, after which the municipality categorizes the work as illegal construction and homeowners face fines, court proceedings and demolition orders.
“Palestinian residents are not permitted — or are not granted permits — to build in most of Silwan, because the objective is to empty the area of its inhabitants,” Abu Diab said.
Israeli and foreign activists protest against the occupation and house demolitions in Silwan, east Jerusalem, on June 24, 2026. (AFP)
He added that more than 6,000 Palestinian structures in Silwan had received either administrative or judicial demolition orders and that hundreds of homes had been demolished.
“Some homes built before 1967 have been demolished,” Abu Diab said. “The argument that these homes did not obtain permits is invalid because they were built before the occupation and did not require permits.”
Much of the pressure has focused on Al-Bustan, a neighborhood adjacent to the City of David tourist and archaeological site, which is operated by the settler organization Elad.
Israeli institutions promote the site as part of the ancient biblical landscape associated with King David. The Jerusalem Municipality proposed the King’s Garden tourist park in 2010, according to B’Tselem, with plans to extend the Jerusalem Walls National Park and City of David archaeological site over land in Al-Bustan.
Abu Diab said the area had about 1,550 residents and 115 homes. Since the start of the Gaza war on Oct. 7, 2023, he said, 59 homes had been demolished and the remainder had received demolition orders.
He said the plans were aimed at demolishing Palestinian homes and replacing them with parks and parking areas.
According to B’Tselem’s March report, from October 2015 through April 2026, 33 families had been evicted from the Baten Al-Hawa neighborhood, while 53 more faced expulsion. The group said 48 homes in Al-Bustan had been demolished and another 123 families were at risk of expulsion.
Abu Diab said archaeological activity in Silwan was also being used to establish a particular historical account of the area.
“In some areas of Silwan, excavations are used to obscure older remains — whether Canaanite, Roman, Byzantine or from successive Islamic periods — and alter them significantly,” he said, adding that “such practices violate international law.”
Khaled Al-Zeer, a Silwan resident and Greek Orthodox Patriarchate employee, walks on Patriarchate property seized by Israeli forces in east Jerusalem on June 21, 2026. (AFP)
Abu Diab said that “the occupation and its authorities are working to change the narrative and change names,” pointing to street names that he said had been changed from those used for generations to names associated with other historical periods.
He said the purpose was to “eliminate the Arab presence in the area and turn it into museums and tunnels intended to influence visitors and falsify history.”
In Wadi Al-Rababa, Abu Diab said, 99 dunams, or about 99,000 square meters, had been confiscated by the municipality, the nature authority and other Israeli bodies for parks.
B’Tselem has described the measures in Silwan as part of a broader system of Palestinian dispossession in East Jerusalem, carried out through planning policy, legislation, court actions, settler organizations and what it calls systematic municipal neglect.
“In Silwan, as in other Palestinian neighborhoods of Jerusalem and Palestinian villages across the West Bank, the Israeli regime uses every tool at its disposal to dispossess Palestinians of their land,” the group said.
It described Israel’s campaign of dispossession and displacement in Jerusalem as “part of a broader plan to cleanse the area of its Palestinian residents and Judaize the neighborhoods surrounding the Old City.”
Israeli authorities reject accusations that their policies amount to systematic displacement, saying enforcement actions are based on planning laws, court rulings and land claims.
For the family whose home reportedly sits above the newly found tomb, the archaeological discovery now brings that larger conflict into their living room.
