Over many years, Israel created a series of national parks around the Old City on the pretext of preserving "green areas". Some hem in Palestinian neighbourhoods to stop their expansion while others were declared on the land of existing Palestinian homes to justify expelling the occupants.
Now the parliament has reversed course. The new law, drafted by another settler group, Elad, will allow house-building in national parks, but only for Jews.
Elad's immediate aim is to bolster the settler presence in Silwan, where it has overseen a national park next to Al Aqsa. Archaeology has been co-opted to supposedly prove the area was once ruled by King David while thousands of years of subsequent history, most especially the current Palestinian presence, are erased.
Elad's activities include excavating under Palestinian homes, weakening their foundations.
A massive new Jewish history-themed visitor centre will dominate Silwan's entrance. Completing the project is a $55 million cable car, designed to carry thousands of tourists an hour over Silwan and other neighbourhoods, rendering the Palestinian inhabitants invisible as visitors are delivered effortlessly to the Western Wall without ever having to encounter them.
The settlers have their own underhand methods. With the authorities' connivance, they have forged documents to seize Palestinian homes closest to Al Aqsa. In other cases, the settlers have recruited Arab collaborators to dupe other Palestinians into selling their homes.
Once they gain a foothold, the settlers typically turn the appropriated home into an armed compound. Noise blares out into the early hours, Palestinian neighbours are subjected to regular police raids and excrement is left in their doorways.
After the recent sale to settlers of a home strategically located in the Old City's Muslim quarter, the Palestinian Authority set up a commission of inquiry to investigate. But the PA is near-powerless to stop this looting after Israel passed a law in 1995 denying it any role in Jerusalem.
The same measure is now being vigorously enforced against the few residents trying to stop the settler banditry.
Adnan Ghaith, Jerusalem's governor and a Silwan resident, was arrested last week for a second time and banned from entering the West Bank and meeting PA officials. Adnan Husseini, the Palestinian minister for Jerusalem, is under a six-month travel ban by Israel.
Last week dozens of Palestinians were arrested in Jerusalem, accused of working for the PA to stop house sales to the settlers.
It is a quiet campaign of attrition, designed to wear down Jerusalem's Palestinian residents. The hope is that they will eventually despair and relocate to the city's distant suburbs outside the wall or into the West Bank.
What Palestinians in Jerusalem urgently need is a reason for hope -- and a clear signal that other countries will not join the US in abandoning them.
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