The glorious image of the Dome of the Rock and the eastern area of Al-Masjid Al-Aqsa, as well as the cultural landmarks of the holy city have always constituted a constant concern for the Israeli occupation government, leading it to seek to occupy it throughout the two types of the Judaization process: above-the-ground Judaization, and excavations underneath the Israeli holy places. However, the Judaization scene has not ended here; the Israeli occupation government and its colonial institutes targeted the holy city’s environment by the theft of the green hillsides and Jabal Al-Zaitoun ( Mount of the Olives), under the name of “development.”
As the “development” is just an attempt of Judaization in accordance with about 181 Israeli laws and in continuation of the expulsions and ethnic displacement within the city and its neighborhoods, the National Parks Act was passed in 1974. It has determined the surrounding areas of the old town of Al-Quds as green areas in which construction is prohibited, and identified a number of settlement parks to be built upon it in order to become an Israeli tourist landmark and exclusive Jewish areas, under the name of preservation of the natural environment. Therefore, it has prevented the Palestinian economic and urban development near the colonial settlements.
Between the arrest of the bodies of martyrs in the “Cemeteries of Numbers” and the demolition of Palestinian and Islamic graves, the Israeli occupation is still alive in Palestine, violating all international laws and conventions. To make a history rejected by walls, foundations and rocks of Al-Quds, archaeologists excavated underground, subjugated those monuments to Israel’s fake, baseless narrative. It is common that monuments tell the history and glory of the Earth, but it is quite different in Israel's custom, as it has a narrative that wants to prove true regardless of its lack of credibility.
The Israeli occupation has developed the parks’ schemes in order to impose a settlement reality on everything surrounding Al-Masjid Al-Aqsa, aiming to control the demographic and spatial spaces. Accordingly, the construction of parks is considered as another form of colonial settlement, and the creation of religious symbols as a compensation for the failure of the "Israeli" narrative with Jewish monuments in the city. Moreover, those parks are museums filled with models, logos and objects spoken by the Torah, as this will give them a religious presence in the city.
These colonial parks are nothing more than delusional biblical parks, named by Jewish religious names that blur the Arab and religious realities of Al-Quds, marketed to the world as a Jewish city, and shown as the so-called “Temple Mount” area in order to attract "evangelical" pilgrims and Zionist tourists. They are seven parks with an area of 2,680 dunums, which means stealing more lands, and stopping the natural urban growth in the city.
What is more serious is the acceptance of the Talmudic narrative as seen by the colonial settlers. Those parks have focused on the vicinity of Al-Masjid Al-Aqsa, the city’s walls and the areas overlooking it from the south, east and north, indicating the inculcation of the Jewish heritage among the Israelis, the falsification of geography and history, the deletion of Palestinian monuments and the change of their character, and the blurring of the Arab and Islamic civilization landmarks.
The aim of these settlement parks is to undermine 18 Jerusalemite neighborhoods, which constitute about 40% of the population of the so-called “the capital of the occupation state”, and to reach only about 10%; thereby empty those neighborhoods of their citizens by narrowing, expelling and revoking residency. Hence, building colonial parks is one of the means of occupation to settle and end the geographical, demographic and historical battle in Al-Quds. For this purpose, half a billion shekels have been allocated between 2005-2013.
Silwan Colonial Park is the largest park, with an area of 1,100 dunums south of Al-Masjid Al-Aqsa. It has annexed the territory of Silwan, Al-Rabba Valley, the land of the Umayyad Caliphate Palace, a big part of Al-Rahma Cemetery, and a narrow section of the Old Walls of Al-Quds in the North. Also, this park basically aims to completely delete the Islamic part of Al-Masjid Al-Aqsa and make it lose its Arab, Islamic identity.
Also, the Wadi al-Sawwanah Neighbourhood Park, which has an area of 170 dunums and is intended to create a colonial contact with Al-Sawwanab Park and displace about 14 families threatened with eviction; and, the Park located on Jabal Al-Tur, which has an area of 730 dunums and is connected with the former park; the Jerusalemites will be closed before the area. Moreover, on the grounds of the Al-Bustan neighborhood, the King's Garden will be set up with an area of 50 dunums, threatening about 90 houses with demolition. This means demolishing the whole neighborhood, whose people are still fighting their battle with the occupation courts to scuttle the scheme. Meanwhile, the Olive Mountain Garden governs the occupation control over the Old City, and besieges Al-Quds in all directions, along with the Grand Park, and Wadi al-Sawwanah Park, filled with Islamic Waqf facilities.
Furthermore, the construction of a settlement park was approved in 2021, on the land of Karam al-Mufti in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood with an area of 25 dunums, in favour of the outpost erected on the ruins of the Shepherd Hotel "Mufti Amin al-Hussein's house", confiscated in 1967. A big part of its was converted to a synagogue, and the number of settlement units was increased to some 56, Thus, it brought more settlers, narrowed down the people of Sheikh Jarrah, and imposed further encirclement on Al-Masjid Al-Aqsa. So, these parks became the cordon that strangles around Al-Quds and cuts the communication between the Jerusalemites, with the aim of preventing the city's partition once any settlement has been reached to end the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.