“. . .  Elad . . .  seeks to increase Jewish settlement in the Silwan area by purchasing existing homes on behalf of Jewish families. . .  [with funds] from fundraising efforts . . .  possibly also from the donations of wealthy Russian Jewish oligarchs who support the settlement movement in East Jerusalem . . .  archaeologist Israel Finkelstein sees a serious problem here. ‘The official state institutions abandoned the management of the City of David site to a [private] foundation with clear political inclinations,’ he says.”

❶ UNESCO Adopts Resolution Reaffirming Israel’s Lack of Sovereignty over Jerusalem
. . . . . ❶ ― (ᴀ)   UNESCO Resolution ‘Sad, Unnecessary, and Pathetic,’ According to Israeli Foreign Ministry
❷ Israel puts its occupation on display in East Jerusalem

Background: “No Saints in Jerusalem.” Archaeology.

❸ Israeli forces reportedly beat, pepper-spray Palestinians in Silwan raids
. . . . . ❸ ― (ᴀ) Arrests in Al-Sowaneh and Esawyehn
❹ POETRY by Mahmoud Darwish
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
❶ UNESCO  ADOPTS  RESOLUTION  REAFFIRMING  ISRAEL’S  LACK  OF  SOVEREIGNTY  OVER  JERUSALEM        
International Middle East Media Center – IMEMC 
July 6, 2017.   The World Heritage Committee of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) adopted, on Tuesday, a resolution which confirms Israel’s lack of sovereignty over occupied Jerusalem.
___The organization condemned, in a meeting in Krakov, southern Poland, the excavations carried out by the Israeli Antiquities Department, in Jerusalem.
___According to Al Ray Palestinian Media Agency, the Arab Group of Arab States submitted the wording of the resolution . . .   MORE . . .  
. . . . . ❶ ― (ᴀ)   UNESCO  RESOLUTION  ‘SAD,  UNNECESSARY,  AND  PATHETIC,’  ACCORDING  TO  ISRAELI  FOREIGN  MINISTRY      
Palestine Chronicle
Jul 5 2017.   The United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization’s (UNESCO) World Heritage Committee adopted a resolution on Tuesday reaffirming the international body’s non-recognition of Israeli sovereignty in occupied East Jerusalem. . . [. . . .] The Israeli Foreign Ministry slammed the resolution as “sad, unnecessary, and pathetic.”
___“This is another absurd and irrelevant UNESCO decision, which serves only the enemies of history and truth,” the ministry said in a statement. It went on to reiterate the Israeli claim that Jerusalem was “the eternal capital of the Jewish people” and of Israel – a claim not recognized by the international community. . .   MORE . . .  RELATED:  “Israel fears endangered World Heritage status could thwart Hebron takeover.”
❷ ISRAEL  PUTS  ITS  OCCUPATION  ON  DISPLAY  IN  EAST  JERUSALEM 
The Middle East Monitor – MEMO
July 6, 2017.   Israeli occupation forces projected images from its Judaisation project in East Jerusalem on the walls of Damascus Gate yesterday.
___Part of its annual “Festival of Lights”, the display showed pictures which depicted specific historical periods or which were linked to religious beliefs.
___This year’s event was used as part of the municipality’s efforts to Judaise the city and eradicate its Islamic history replacing it with the Zionist narrative.
___According to Adnan Al- Husayni, minister of Jerusalem affairs, the Umayyad palaces that are targeted by the festival include mostly Islamic Umayyad monuments . . .    MORE . . .

Milstein, Mati. “NO  SAINTS  IN  JERUSALEM.” Archaeology, vol. 63, no. 5, Sep/Oct2010, pp. 18-66.
How religion, politics, and archaeology clash on–and under–the streets of Jerusalem 
In the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, some of the 50,000 Palestinian residents can hear digging under their homes. Silwan is partially situated atop the popular tourist attraction known to Israelis as the City of David, the oldest part of historic Jerusalem, directly south of the Temple Mount. During the biblical and Roman periods, the Temple Mount was home to the First and Second Jewish temples (which are believed to have stood between 832 and 422 B.C. and 516 B.C. and A.D. 70, respectively), and was the center of Jewish ritual and spiritual life for millennia. Following the Muslim conquest of the city in A.D. 638, the Umayyad rulers erected the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosque, two structures that are focal points for Palestinian and Muslim religious identity. There are few, if any, more valued and contested places on earth.
[. . . .]  Excavations and explorations across Israel and the West Bank, many of them located a stone’s throw from key Jewish and Islamic holy sites, lie at the heart of the struggle between Israelis and Palestinians. And artifacts recovered from Jerusalem’s soil are being used as ammunition in the escalating–and often violent–conflict.  Each nation forges its identity from common mythology, religion, and a sense of shared history. Especially in the Holy Land, where people’s historical identity affects every aspect of their lives, there is an eagerness to back up these histories with physical evidence.
[. . . .]  According to Hamdan Taha, archaeological and cultural heritage expert at the Palestinian Authority’s Tourism Ministry, “The sort of archaeology being carried out in Jerusalem, specifically in East Jerusalem and the Silwan area, is motivated by hidden agendas and has nothing to do with scientific objectives. It is done secretly, without taking into consideration international standards, and casts great doubts on the objectives of these excavations.”    [. .  . .]  ___Mahdi Abdul Hadi, chairman of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs, agrees. “People are totally ignorant about where they are from, what they are doing, about their identity.” But he warns that empty slogans, rhetoric, and religion, rather than real education, are filling this gap. “Nobody will look at archaeology in good faith today. Everything is exploited now, because the hatred is deepening,” he says . . . .     SOURCE . . .

❸ ISRAELI  FORCES  REPORTEDLY  BEAT,  PEPPER-SPRAY  PALESTINIANS  IN  SILWAN  RAIDS 
Ma’an News Agency 
July 6, 2017.   Israeli forces assaulted Palestinian residents during a raid in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan on Wednesday evening, as two Palestinians were detained.
___The Wadi Hilweh Information Center reported that six Palestinians sustained bruises and suffered from excessive tear gas inhalation during a raid targeting the home of one Muhammad al-Abbasi in the area of Ein al-Luza, during which residents said they were assaulted by Israeli police officers.
___The center added that no reason was given for the raid in the al-Abbasi home, during which Israeli pushed and pepper-sprayed women, children, and elderly Palestinians, pointing their weapons at youth.
[. . . .] Clashes erupted in the neighborhood following the home raid, during which Israeli forces reportedly fired rubber-coated steel bullets and stun grenades in an haphazard fashion, before detaining Muhammad Ibrahim Ruweidi, 20, and Muhammad Imad Taha, 19.   MORE . . . 

. . . . . ❸ ― (ᴀ) ARRESTS  IN  AL-SOWANEH  AND  ESAWYEHN    
Wadi Hilweh Information Center – Silwan 
July 4, 2017.   The occupation forces arrested seven young Jerusalemite men on Tuesday early morning after raiding their homes in the neighborhood of Al-Sowaneh in Jerusalem.
___Wadi Hilweh Information Center was informed that the occupation forces along with intelligence personnel raided the neighborhood of Al-Sowaneh and stormed into several houses and arrested 7 young men . . . .
___Lawyer Mohammad Mahmoud explained that the arrests were made under the pretext of “participating in the funeral of Ali Abu Gharbieh who was drowned in Tiberius Lake last Friday; the body was found last Sunday.   MORE . . .   BACKGROUND . . .

“IN  JERUSALEM,”  BY  MAHMOUD  DARWISH  (1941 – 2008)
In Jerusalem, and I mean within the ancient walls,
I walk from one epoch to another without a memory
to guide me. The prophets over there are sharing
the history of the holy . . . ascending to heaven
and returning less discouraged and melancholy, because love
and peace are holy and are coming to town.
I was walking down a slope and thinking to myself: How
do the narrators disagree over what light said about a stone?
Is it from a dimly lit stone that wars flare up?
I walk in my sleep. I stare in my sleep. I see
no one behind me. I see no one ahead of me.
All this light is for me. I walk. I become lighter. I fly
then I become another. Transfigured. Words
sprout like grass from Isaiah’s messenger
mouth: “If you don’t believe you won’t believe.”
I walk as if I were another. And my wound a white
biblical rose. And my hands like two doves
on the cross hovering and carrying the earth.
I don’t walk, I fly, I become another,
transfigured. No place and no time. So who am I?
I am no I in ascension’s presence. But I
think to myself: Alone, the prophet Mohammad
spoke classical Arabic. “And then what?”
Then what? A woman soldier shouted:
Is that you again? Didn’t I kill you?
I said: You killed me . . . and I forgot, like you, to die.
—About Mahmoud Darwish
—Published by the Academy of American Poets.