Their palms stained with car lubricants and oils bear witness to decades of continuous work in their garages in the industrial area of ​​Wadi Al-Joz, which the Israeli occupation seeks to uproot and replace huge projects with.

Although 40 people received orders to evacuate their facilities until the end of this year, they are busy with their work despite their unknown career.

Jamal Salah, he looks almost outside his facility only when one of the clients calls him to check the electricity of his car, and at home he engages in arranging and examining the goods, rejecting the idea of ​​uprooting him from the place where he worked for three decades, and supports his family who live just 100 meters from His livelihood.

Salah says to Al Jazeera Net, "For many years, it has been heard in our hearts that the industrial zone in Wadi Al-Joz will turn into a courtyard, and the municipality is in its interest to destroy our interests, displace us, and replace its Judaization projects in our place."

The Salah family operates four adjacent facilities in the industrial area, and Salah says that they support more than 30 individuals. The four facilities received eviction orders, which the occupation municipality gave them six months to comply with.

Salah adds, "The meters of the land here are more expensive than any region in the world, because Wadi Al-Joz is a strategic neighborhood close to the old town, Al-Aqsa Mosque and all markets. Our facilities are located on a vital street occupied by Arabs and they have been building for decades. This is why the municipality wants to eradicate us from it."

He refused to uproot
not far from the Salah family’s establishments. The young Jerusalemite Alaa Harhash meets his customer’s request to repair the tire of his car in the famous “Harhash Tires” shop in the industrial area.

While receiving Al-Jazeera Net in his shop, he said that he rejects the idea of ​​moving to work in Israeli industrial areas in Jerusalem, such as "Atarot" and "Mishor Adumim", because he works on a vital street that all Jerusalemites easily visit and in the event of his move customers will not catch him to distant places.

Alaa Harhash while working on tire replacement (Al-Jazeera)

Harhash also rejects the idea of ​​working as a wage earner with a Jewish stakeholder in another industrial area, after forcibly evicting him from his facility.

The occupation municipality in Jerusalem plans to implement two huge projects on the ruins of about 180 facilities for Jerusalemites in the industrial zone in Wadi Al-Joz, the first will be an extension of the project "East Jerusalem City Center" and the other "Silicon Valley".

Mayor Moshe Lyon and his crew are promoting the "Silicon Valley" project through the Israeli media, and several sessions were held with the landowners in the industrial zone as the largest High Technology project in Jerusalem, which will be built on an area of ​​200,000 square meters, to create places Hitech employers of 10,000 Jerusalemite graduates and academics.

Continuous promotion The
municipality also seduces the landowners there with its plan to develop a street that will contain wide corridors and monuments that will be devoted to artistic performances that will revitalize the night movement in the place, and will generate money for small stakeholders in the region.

The mayor, Moshe Lyon, told the newspaper "Israel Today" that he is taking a historic step to compensate for the failure, and to open a new page with Jerusalemites based on mutual trust with the municipality, which will do everything in its power to make this modern project a success.

Threatened zone of extinction in Wadi Joz industrial area (Al-Jazirah)

These statements are not strange to the mayor, who has followed a policy of soft penetration with Jerusalemites since he took office, and said that the aim of this project is to reorganize the trade and industry sectors in the Wadi al-Joz neighborhood, from random work to the trade and industry of two organizations.

The area of ​​land on which the "Silicon Valley" project - which the municipality has not yet put up in the newspapers and which the Jerusalem Planning and Building Committee has not approved - is about 30 dunums.

As for the land that the municipality intends to annex to the "East Jerusalem City Center" project, it has an area of ​​five acres and belongs to the endowment of the Al-Khatib family, and it is assumed that residential buildings will be built on it under which commercial interests completely ignore the current use of the place, and this project has been approved.

And evacuation orders distributed by the municipality took the title of "stopping the exceptional use", considering that the owners of "garages" have used the shops exceptionally and violently for decades, although they renew their professions license and collect taxes from them annually.

In this context, lawyer Muhannad Jabara says that several paths for the benefit of professionals can be taken to the courts to defend them.

He adds that "the people there have been using the area for industrial occupations for more than 50 years, and in Israel there is a (basic law) that falls under the freedom to work act, and the municipality cannot harm them without providing them with a suitable alternative."

Hazem Al-Harbawi, who owns with his family about two and a half acres, is one of the landowners with whom the municipality held several sessions to convince them of the feasibility of the "Silicon Valley" project that it intends to establish after the destruction of their current commercial interests.

Hazem Al-Harbawi, one of the landowners in Wadi Al-Joz (Al-Jazirah)

Al-Harbawi says to Al-Jazeera Net that the municipality has been talking for many years about a plan to remove the industrial part of the street, because it does not match the area and the features of the city, and supports the development of the street, but he refuses to harm the livelihoods of the old rented garage owners.

He adds that "the municipality has drawn up a project plan and is trying to convince us of it, and if we find that the project has an interest for us and our community and the development of our region we have no objection, but if we find that this project has long-term political goals we do not know it until now, we will not agree to it and our meetings with the municipality are still ongoing".

Of the property belonging to the Al-Harbawi family in Wadi Al-Joz (Al-Jazirah)

It is mentioned that the municipality’s plan includes commercial establishments on the lower floors and offices on the upper floors, devoted to technology companies and a technological college in high-rise buildings, which landowners reject so far because they are pushing to allocate part of the building to housing.

In this context, the director of the Jerusalem Center for Economic and Social Rights, Ziad Al-Hamouri, says that the municipality has always put forward projects that it claims are in the interest of Jerusalemites, but in reality it directs trade, industry and tourism to West Jerusalem for the benefit of the Israelis.

Al-Hamouri pointed out that the settlement circle around the old town has become a court, and that the daily policies of the occupation are aimed at economic pressure on Jerusalemites, to impoverish them, weaken them, and push them to migrate out of the city in greater numbers.