Andrew Lawler wrote about the Lost Colony
of Roanoke in the June 2018 issue of National
Geographic. Photographer Simon Norfolk has
documented many of the world’s conflict zones.Across the street, Hamad’s neighbor, an older
woman named Miriam Bashir, doesn’t seem
happy to see me. “I’m fed up with journalists,”
she says. “I just want to be left alone. We are lost.
We don’t know what to do!”
After a few minutes she relents and agrees to
show me the damage to her interior walls. “The
cracks began three years ago, but they became
more obvious in the past year and a half,” she
says. As I say goodbye to Bashir at her gate, she
smiles for the first time. “I would like you to
relate our story in an honest and clear way. We
are peaceful people who live here, and we will
stay here despite the damage.”
When I spoke with Spielman, he dismissed the
concerns of Arab residents. “Yes, we are working
under people’s homes, which is not an issue if it
is engineered well, which it is.”
Three days after my visit to the Palestinians,
Spielman sent a chilly email warning me against
providing a stage for “the claims of politically
motivated, anti-Israel, special interest groups.”
He requested that I supply in writing the details
of any “nefarious claims” before publication.
My repeated attempts to speak again with him
and other City of David officials were met with
silence. The waqf ’s Natsheh is not so reticent.
For him the excavations and attempts to dis-
place Palestinians are intimately connected.
“Archaeology should not be a tool for justifying
occupation,” he says.
What lies beneath Jerusalem reveals that the
city’s history is too rich and complicated to fit
any single narrative, whether Jewish, Christian,
or Muslim. Helena failed to wipe away its pagan
past, just as the Romans fell short of annihilat-
ing the rebellious Judaean capital and Muslims
couldn’t remove all traces of the hated crusader
occupation. No matter who is in charge of this
most contested of places, evidence from the past
inevitably will surface, challenging any story tai-
lored to a narrow political or religious agenda.
“Everyone who ruled Jerusalem did the same
thing: built his tower and hoisted his flag,” says
Weksler-Bdolah with a laugh, taking the long
view demanded by this venerable and violent
place. “But I think it is stronger than all those
who try to control it. No one can completely
erase what came before.” jhave existed for thousands of years,” he says.
“This isn’t like an Akkadian site. The people who
began here are still here.”
In his telling, the development helps everyone.
“People buy their Popsicles and drinks from Arab
stores,” he says. “And there is a lot of security
that benefits both Arabs and Jews.” He is also
optimistic about the impact of Jewish residents,
who now number about one in 10 and who live
largely in gated compounds patrolled by armed
guards. “You will see this as a model of coexis-
tence. People will be living together within an
active archaeology site with a lot of opportunity.”
THAT’S NOT HOW Abd Yusuf, a burly local shop-
keeper, sees it. “Business is terrible!” he tells me,
as he sits amid Jerusalem-themed knickknacks.
“We used to have so many tourists, but now no
one comes. They take all the tourists to their
shops,” he adds, referring to the City of David’s
concessions. Then he points to cracks in his
wall. “I have had to replace my door three times
because the earth shifts beneath.”
Just up the street, I pay a visit to Sahar
Abbasi, an English teacher who also works as
deputy director at the Wadi Hilweh Informa-
tion Center, a Palestinian organization housed
in a modest storefront. “The excavations pose
many challenges,” she says. “Our homes are
being damaged and destroyed.” She estimates
that 40 houses have been affected, half of them
severely, while five families have been evicted
from dwellings considered unsafe.
“If they can’t control us from above, they start
to control us from below,” Abbasi adds.
One morning, off a narrow alley above Uziel’s
tunnel, Arafat Hamad welcomes me into his
courtyard studded with lemon trees. A retired
barber, Hamad has short silver hair and a fast
smile that fades quickly. “I built this house in
1964 with a thick concrete foundation, but look
what has happened in the past couple of years,”
he says, pointing to wide cracks that creep up
to just below the first-floor windows. Taking me
around to the side of the house, Hamad points
to piles of rubble. “One evening last August we
were sitting on the porch when the house began
to shake,” he recalls. “We could hear them work-
ing below with heavy machinery. If you put your
hand to the floor, you could feel the vibrations.
We fled the house to neighbors’, and then we
heard a bang—and we could see the cloud of dust
rising from where our outdoor kitchen had been.”
UNDER JERUSALEM 67