Twenty-eight Palestinian families and one Jewish family are living in adjoining buildings in Jerusalem’s Old City that have been deemed too dangerous to inhabit. For the past two weeks, the families have had to contend with huge cracks in their walls, shifting doorposts and sinking floors.

The residents claim that water leaks and infrastructure work by Gihon, Jerusalem’s water company, is at fault, but the company denies this. To add insult to injury, the residents say, emergency repairs they’ve made on the buildings have drawn the wrath of the Israel Antiquities Authority, which has warned them against harming the old buildings, which are slated for preservation.

Although the municipality has condemned some parts of the two- and three-storey structures, located on Al-Qirami Street in the Muslim Quarter, and has issued evacuation orders to the residents, all are still living there because they have no place to go. Two weeks ago, as 12-year-old Ismail Asmar was leaving his home, a large stone fell from the lintel at the entrance and just missed injuring him. He called his parents and asked them to come down. When his father, Hitam Asmar, began descending the stairs, “I felt as if they weren’t the same stairs. I started to look around and saw cracks everywhere,” he said.

Soon cracks began to appear throughout the Asmars’ apartment, and the floor in the front of the home sank more than 15 centimeters. The arched entranceway also began to crack, and only the swift erection of a metal and wood construction prevented it from totally collapsing and trapping them in the apartment.

The Asmar family soon learned they were not alone and that all of their immediate neighbors were suffering similar problems. In the apartment on top of them, the sky is visible through large cracks that have opened in the ancient, vaulted ceiling, while, in an adjacent apartment that was recently renovated, stairs have broken, the angle of the walls has changed, plaster is peeling, the doorposts are crooked and the doors no longer close.

At first the residents thought there had been an earthquake, but that possibility was quickly dismissed. They then considered whether the homes were being affected by archeological digs in the area, but discovered that no digs were going on anywhere near them.

The residents now say that there had been several bursts in the water pipes that run under their street. Because their buildings are some hundreds of years old and were built without concrete or foundations, the water has swept away soil under the buildings and severely undermined their stability, they say.

The Gihon water company denies any connection between the pipes and what has happened to the houses. The company has repaired pipes in Al-Qirami Street, but the shifting continues and new cracks appear in the structures every day.

Despite the bleak situation, all the residents are remaining in their apartments, though some families have abandoned the rooms where the largest cracks have appeared. Asmar has opened another exit to his house, “as an emergency exit, so that if there’s a collapse we’ll have where to run,” he said.

“It’s scary to live here, but we are laborers earning NIS 5,000 [a month] said Asmar’s neighbor, Mohiv Hijazi. “We have nowhere to go.”

One homeowner, an elderly carpentry owner named Sadi Sa’id Ahmed, said that for two years he has been hearing water bubbling under his floor, but he was treated contemptuously when he called Gihon. The residents have also noticed escalating water bills over the past two years.

Repairing the homes will require their partial demolition and very careful work, since the houses have historic value and are marked for preservation. Days after the cracks started to appear, the residents, at their own expense, erected a metal scaffold to help stabilize the buildings. This brought Antiquities Authority inspectors to the area who warned them against harming the historic stones.

“They’re coming down on us from all directions – from the municipality, from Gihon, from the Antiquities Authority,” said Asmar. “We’re in danger here and nobody cares. We’re orphans.”

The Jerusalem Municipality said in response: “In this case, teams of Jerusalem Municipality employees examined all the buildings on Haladiyeh and Qirami streets in the Old City. The findings showed that in some of the buildings cracks were created because of sinking foundations. Given this, a number of rooms were condemned in three different apartments, two of which are occupied.

“In one apartment, there are other rooms that were certified safe and are serving as the family residence, while in the second, which houses a family of 13 people, an offer was made to move the family to a nearby hotel, but they refused. In addition, the owners of the dangerous buildings on these streets were sent notices warning them of the risks posed by their structures and demanding that they repair the buildings and strengthen the foundations so as to remove the danger.”

Gihon responded by saying, “The cracks in buildings are not related to the leak dealt with in the middle of the street by a Gihon team. The cracks have existed for some time and are in the back of the building, where there is no water pipe infrastructure at all.”