CONFLICT IN CITIES AND THE CONTESTED STATE Everyday life and the possibilities for transformation in Belfast, Jerusalem and other divided cities

www.conflictincities.org

JERUSALEM WEB REVIEW

August/September 2010

1 Jerusalem Web Review (August September 2010) Contents

Peace talks and responses

1. Public Opinion Poll on Peace Negotiations 2. Barak: Israel ready to cede parts of Jerusalem in peace deal 3. International Jerusalem and The Right Of Return

Economy

4. Jerusalem mall: Where Arabs and Jews shop together 5. Jerusalem's 2nd biggest mall to open in 2011

Security and Violence

6. Palestinian shot dead by Israeli guard in East Jerusalem, sparking riots 7. Palestinians take to Jerusalem streets after killing 8. Authorities collude to “Judaise” East Jerusalem

Divisions and Barriers

9. In Jerusalem, a Barrier Comes Down 10. A Jerusalem neighborhood's line in the sky 11. Football and the wall: The divided soccer community of Jerusalem

Silwan

12. How Israeli-Palestinian battle for Jerusalem plays out in one neighborhood 13. Contesting Past and Present at Silwan

Jerusalem Light Railway

14. J'lem train company asks passengers: 'Do you mind traveling with Arabs?' 15. Jerusalem trains 'to be divided by gender'

Future plans

16. Watch this space – Jerusalem Metropolitan Park 17. The Mayor's Vision for Jerusalem

Other Current Issues

18. Activists created 'fictitious' graves in Mamilla cemetery, say Israeli authorities 19. Formerly religious, newly religious or ultra-orthodox? 20. Gilo ‘Jewish Neighbourhood of Illegal Settlement?

2 Peace Talks

1. Public Opinion Poll on Peace egotiations

Conducted by the Jerusalem Media & Communications Center, Poll No. 71 By JMCC, Miftah , 23/09/2010

http://www.miftah.org/Display.cfm?DocId=22606&CategoryId=17

• A majority of Palestinians supports the negotiations and believes that the negotiations serve the national interests, although they think that the Palestinians accepted entering negotiations because of external pressure.

• Slight improvement in the view towards the US after the resumption of the peace efforts

• Rise in rate of confidence in President Abbas and Fatah Movement

• A majority says security and safety have improved in the West Bank.

• MBC TV Station is the most watched during the month of Ramadan; Al-Jazeera TV is the main source of news and local Ajyal Radio Station got highest rating among listeners.

• A majority of 63% does not shake hands with the other sex.

Peace & egotiations

The results of the public opinion poll conducted by Jerusalem Media & Communications Center, which were published today, showed that a majority of the Palestinians (54.3%) believes that the Palestinian acceptance to resume the peace negotiations serves the Palestinian interests, although at the same time a majority of Palestinians (58.8%) said the Palestinian acceptance of the Quartet Committee’s request to resume the negotiations came because of external pressure. A ratio of 34.2% said the Palestinian acceptance to resume negotiations was due to the belief that there is a possibility to make these negotiations succeed.

The poll, which was conducted during the period September 11-15, 2010 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, included a random sample of 1,200 respondents. A majority of the respondents (55.7%) said no major changes will occur on the current status quo as a result of the negotiations compared with a ratio of 38.3%, who believe that the negotiations will result in major changes.

Confidence in the US Administration

It seems that the resumption of the US diplomatic efforts has not led to a major improvement in the view towards the US among the Palestinian people as the ratio of Palestinians, who note improvement in the US diplomatic performance towards the Middle East issues, rose from 10.1% in April 2010 to 13.9% in this poll.

3 egotiations & Resistance

In general, a majority of Palestinians (52.9%) believes that the negotiations are the most effective strategy for the Palestinians in order to achieve their national goals compared with a ratio of 25.7% who said that violent resistance is the best method while a ratio of 15.7% said non-violent resistance is the most effective strategy.

Within the same context, a majority of the Palestinians (52%) said the recent military operation that led to the killing of four settlers near Hebron harms the Palestinian national interests while a ratio of 25.6% said the operation serves the Palestinian national interests.

Political Parties and Leaders

The poll shows that the ratio of confidence in President Abbas went up from 14.8% last April to 19% this September while Ismail Haniyeh maintained his second rank with Marwan Barghouthi coming in third. They are followed by Salam Fayyad, Muhammad Dahlan and Mustafa Barghouthi.

With regard to the political factions, the rate of confidence in Fatah Movement rose from 36.2% last April to 40.7% this September. Hamas came in second place with a confidence ratio of 13.2%.The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) obtained the third place with a ratio of 2.9%, followed by the Palestinian National Initiative (Al-Mubadarah) with 2.0%. A ratio of 30.8% of the Palestinians said they do not trust any faction.

Mass Media and Source of ews

The poll, which was conducted immediately after the Holy Month of Ramadan, showed that the majority of Palestinians (33.9%) watched MBC TV Station followed by Palestine TV Station with a ratio of 9.8% and Al-Jazeera TV Station came in third place with a ratio of 9%. Abu Dhabi TV Station came in fourth place and Al-Aqsa TV Station came in fifth place. When asked about the TV Station that people watch to get news, a majority of Palestinians (54.2%) said they watch Al-Jazeera TV Station for news while a ratio of 15.7% watch Al-Arabeyah TV Station while a ratio of 7.8% watch Palestine TV Station.

With regard to the radio stations, a slight majority (10.8%) said they listen to Ajyal Radio Station more than any other station while a ratio of 5.8% listens to Al-Quds Radio Station and a ratio of 5.2% listens to Al-Aqsa Radio Station. A ratio of 4.4% listens to Marah Radio Station and 4.3% listen to Voice of Palestine. With regard to the source of news, Ajyal Radio Station came in first place as the main source of news with a ratio of 10.2% followed by Al-Aqsa Radio Station. Voice of Israel came in third place followed by Voice of Palestine.

Performance of the Government and the President

With regard to the performance of Mahmoud Abbas as PA President, the poll results showed that the ratio of Palestinians who are satisfied with the way he is running the PA affairs rose from 48.6% last April to reach 53.9% in this poll.

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The poll shows increase in views of Palestinians who feel that security and safety have improved under the Palestinian government headed by PM Salam Fayyad to reach 50.7% this September compared with 43.7% last April. At the same time, the poll noted that less Palestinians believe that security and safety have improved in the Gaza Strip from 32.4% last April to reach 30.2% this September.

A ratio of 38.9% believes that the status of freedom of expression and the right to association and other rights have improved compared with a ratio of 23.2% who said these rights have deteriorated. A ratio of 17.5% of the respondents in Gaza said the status of freedom of expression and right to association and other rights have improved compared with 40.8% who said these rights have witnessed deterioration.

With regard to the party responsible for the escalating water crisis in the Palestinian territories, a majority of Palestinians (68.5%) blamed Israel for the crisis while a ratio of 14.9% held the PNA responsible for the crisis and 14.1% said the local councils are to blame.

On the issue of canceling the Local Council elections which were scheduled for July 17, 2010, a majority of Palestinians (31%) blamed the PA for canceling the elections at the last moment while a ratio of 23.1% blamed Fatah Movement and 30.7% held the foreign governments responsible for the decision.

Regarding the decision to the early shift to winter timing on the first day of Ramadan, which spurred some debate, a majority of the Palestinians (67.5%) said the decision was a positive one while a ratio of 28.7% said it was a negative decision.

Pedantism in the society

With regard to the debate on increasing signs of pedantism in the society, a majority of 62.5% of the respondents said they don’t shake hands with the other sex compared with 36.7% who do. When asked about the reason behind not shaking hands with the other sex, a majority (85.9%) said they do it for religious reasons compared with 13.9% who said they follow social habits and traditions.

2. Barak: Israel ready to cede parts of Jerusalem in peace deal

By Reuters, reproduced in Haaretz , 1/9/2010

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/barak-israel-ready-to-cede- parts-of-jerusalem-in-peace-deal-1.311450

Ahead of start of direct peace talks in Washington, Defense Minister Ehud Barak says Jerusalem's Arab neighborhoods will be part of a Palestinian state; a 'special regime' to govern holy sites. Israel is ready to cede parts of Jerusalem to the Palestinians in the framework of a peace deal, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on Wednesday ahead of the start of talks in Washington.

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Partition in Jerusalem - at the heart of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict -- would include a "special regime" for managing the city's holiest sites, Barak told Haaretz.

He said the killing of four Israelis by Palestinian gunmen in the West Bank on Tuesday should not stop the talks starting.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who meets Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the White House on Wednesday for their first face-to-face negotiations, has publicly balked at dividing the city.

Barak's disclosure suggested the Netanyahu government was willing to yield on Jerusalem, including its walled Old City where al-Aqsa, Islam's third-holiest shrine, abuts the Western Wall, the vestige of Judaism's two ancient temples and today a Jewish prayer plaza.

"West Jerusalem and 12 Jewish neighborhoods that are home to 200,000 residents will be ours. The Arab neighborhoods in which close to a quarter million Palestinians live will be theirs," said Barak, who helped lay the groundwork for the U.S.-sponsored summit.

"There will be a special regime in place along with agreed upon arrangements in the Old City, the Mount of Olives and the City of David," he said.

Israel captured the eastern part of the city from Jordan in the Six Day War in 1967 and annexed it in a move not recognized internationally. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a state they hope to set up in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Barak's vision of two cities and a special regime in the so-called "holy basin" recalls a plan discussed by the previous Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, during peace talks with Abbas that fell apart almost two years ago.

Barak himself negotiated unsuccessfully with the Palestinians a decade ago as prime minister, singling out Jerusalem as the key stumbling point in reaching a deal.

Barak also said any agreement would see the relocation of isolated Jewish West Bank outposts into Israel, which will keep larger urban settlement blocs.

A deal would also have to ensure Israel's security, Barak said, including a presence along the Jordan valley, the West Bank's eastern frontier, and "technological arrangements".

6 3. International Jerusalem and The Right Of Return

Cameron Hunt, Politicaltheatrics, 6/09/2010

http://www.politicaltheatrics.net/2010/09/international-jerusalem-and-the-right-of- return/

It is curious to note the surprise that has accompanied the recent announcement by Ehud Barak, Israel’s Defence Minister and leader of the Israeli Labour Party, of his proposed outcome for Jerusalem as part of any peace deal agreed with the Palestinians: “West Jerusalem and 12 Jewish neighborhoods [of East Jerusalem] … will be ours. The Arab neighborhoods [of East Jerusalem] … will be theirs. There will be a special regime in place along with agreed upon arrangements in the Old City, the Mount of Olives and the City of David.”

Mr Barak had already warned his fellow Israelis earlier in the year that Israel needed to finalize a peace agreement with the Palestinians soon: “As long as in this territory west of the Jordan river there is only one political entity called Israel, it is going to be either non-Jewish, or non-democratic… [And if] millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state… The pendulum of legitimacy is going to move gradually towards the other pole.” However, it appears that Mr Barak has now reached the conclusion that as long as East Jerusalem remains under Israeli sovereignty, there can be no final status agreement with the Palestinians; something that has been clear for many years.

Nonetheless, Mr Barak’s proposal remains interesting not only because he was in charge of the pre-talks leading up to the direct peace talks just started in Washington – including secret negotiations with the Palestinian Authority leader, Mahmoud Abbas – but also because his proposal was in fact born two years earlier to the former Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, who was heading Israel’s caretaker government at the time.

Mr Olmert had proposed to Mr Abbas, at a private meeting on 13 September 2008, an outcome for Jerusalem in which: “The Holy Basin of Jerusalem [comprising of the Old City and its surrounding religious sites] would be under no sovereignty at all and administered by a consortium of Saudis, Jordanians, Israelis, Palestinians and Americans”. It was Mr Olmert that was the first Israeli leader ever to discuss the – albeit only partial – internationalization of Jerusalem; a requirement under international law since 1947. At the same September 2008 meeting, Mr Olmert stated that he could not accept any Palestinian ‘Right of Return’, but that as part of a final status agreement, he would be willing to accept between 2,000 and 3,000 Palestinian refugees as a “humanitarian gesture”.

Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, has since confirmed Mr Olmert’s 2008 offer to Mr Abbas: “He was serious, I have to say.” He also confirmed Mr Abbas’ rejection of the offer during a debate on Al-Jazeera TV, as well as the words spoken by Mr Abbas to Mr Olmert: “I am not in a marketplace or a bazaar. I came to demarcate the borders of Palestine – the June 4, 1967 borders – without detracting a single inch, and without detracting a single stone from Jerusalem, or from the holy Christian and Muslim places.” Mr Erekat went on to state: “This is

7 why the Palestinian negotiators did not sign… There will be no peace whatsoever unless East Jerusalem – with every single stone in it – becomes the capital of Palestine.” Finally, during the same TV debate, Mr Erekat confirmed that at a 23 July 2000 meeting at the Camp David talks, the then Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, rejected proposals for joint Israeli-Palestinian sovereignty over Jerusalem’s Holy Basin, saying: “Jerusalem will be nothing but the capital of the Palestinian state, and there is nothing underneath or above the Haram Al-Sharif except for Allah.”

Mr Abbas is certainly not alone in rejecting Mr Olmert and Mr Barak’s proposal for Jerusalem. Whilst in opposition in January 2009, the current Israeli Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, warned an audience at the ‘Jerusalem Conference’ that US President Barack Obama would try to internationalize Jerusalem’s holy sites; something that had already been recommended by the former US President, Bill Clinton, and more recently by the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. “Some politicians are trying to blur the importance of the Temple Mount to the Jewish People by referring to it as the ‘Holy Basin’. We, as Jews, know who built the Temple Mount.” It comes as little surprise therefore that one of Mr Netanyahu’s aides has in the past few days clarified the official Israeli Government position on Jerusalem, in response to Mr Barak’s recent statements on the topic: “Our position is that Jerusalem will remain the undivided capital of Israel”.

During the relaunch of peace talks at Washington in the past week, Mr Netanyahu told the Palestinians: “Just as you expect us to be ready to recognise a Palestinian state as the nation state of the Palestinian people, we expect you to be prepared to recognise Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people”. It is well understood that this demand – something Mr Netanyahu referred to as one of two ‘pillars to peace’ – is a not-so-subtle attempt to force the Palestinian leadership to formally renounce the ‘Right of Return’ of Palestinian refugees; a legal right under customary international law. It is therefore a precondition of Mr Netanyahu (as it was for Mr Olmert) – at the same time as offering nothing at all to the Palestinians in regards to Jerusalem – that any final status agreement between the two parties can only be concluded if the more than 5 million Palestinian refugees are to be resettled in the new Palestinian state, “the nation-state of the Palestinian people”, and not within Israel, “the nation-state of the Jewish people”.

In this regard, the most fascinating point that is raised by Israeli proposals to internationalize at least part of Jerusalem, is that neither Mr Olmert nor Mr Barak appears to have considered the future capacity of the State of Israel – which would constitute a minority component of the proposed international consortium of Palestine, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the USA – to continue to block the long- established legal right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes; in those cases where their homes had existed or continued to exist within Jerusalem. By agreeing to the internationalization of the Holy Basin, the Israelis would effectively be agreeing to permit all Palestinians who had, or whose forefathers had lived within its environs to return home unimpeded; Israel could no longer veto the capacity of some thousands of Palestinian refugees to exercise their ‘Right of Return’.

8 Uncomfortably for Mr Abbas and other Arab leadership, such considerations might well lead the millions of Palestinians left languishing for decades within refugees camps to question the true value of Palestinian ‘sovereignty’ over the Holy Basin of Jerusalem; particulary when the faithful among them believe that “there is nothing underneath or above the Haram Al-Sharif except for Allah”, and particulary when it meant that they and their children had to live within the camps, forever. Even more unfomfortably for the PA’s well-appointed ruling class, those very same Palestinians might begin to wonder what the outcome would be if they demanded that historic Palestine be internationalized in its entirety – something that can be easily achieved through the UN General Assembly. Maybe they could all go home?

Economy

4. Jerusalem mall: Where Arabs and Jews shop together

Nir Hasson, Haaretz , 22/9/2010

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/jerusalem-mall-where-arabs-and-jews- shop-together-1.315069

Jerusalem's shopping centers are where Israelis and Palestinians are most likely to mix, a new report finds, but neither are pleased. The boundary between East and West in the capital is not as clear-cut as it once was. Increasing numbers of Palestinians from East Jerusalem are shopping and spending leisure time in the western part of town.

New research also reports that having Arabs in shopping malls upsets many Jews. The research, soon to be published by the Floersheimer Institute for Policy Studies, was carried out by Marik Shtern, the son of the late MK Yuri Shtern. He did the research for Prof. Shlomo Hasson, studying integration in three locations: Malha Mall, the Alrov (Mamilla ) Mall and the Old City markets.

Gideon Avrahami, Malha's director, said 1,000 to 1,200 Palestinians come to the mall on any given day - about 3 percent of all visitors. But on Muslim holidays and Sundays, the figure rises to 25 percent. Shtern said that 35 percent of the Jewish shoppers he interviewed at Malha expressed negative opinions about Arabs there. "If I would go to them, they'd butcher me," one woman said. One man said the mall had "gone down hill" with the Arabs there. Some said the Arab presence didn't bother them. Only one interviewee, a midwife from the Ramat Sharett neighborhood, said something positive: "It's excellent. They don't have a mall so they enjoy themselves here."

Shtern said lower middle-class Arab shoppers come to the mall for free cultural events and the upper middle-class come for products they cannot find in East Jerusalem or the West Bank. Arab shoppers said the security checks at the entrances were an obstacle.The three-year-old Mamilla Mall is probably the capital's most cosmopolitan shopping area, where Jews, Muslims, and tourists of all faiths mix in

9 almost equal numbers. Unlike Malha, many shop workers are Palestinian, which heightens the sense coexistence. "This is a floating balloon, unconnected to anything," a cafe worker told Shtern.

Israeli visitors seem to perceive the place as less "Jewish"; only 22 percent of those interviewed expressed a negative opinion about the presence of Arab shoppers. As for Old City markets, Shtern concludes Jews and Arabs perceive the area as an arena of conflict. Many Jews, asked whether they felt safe there, responded with an ideological declaration like "I feel safe everywhere in the Land of Israel. But they also said the presence of Arabs negatively affected their sense of safety.Palestinians, too, felt insecure. "I'm afraid of groups of Israelis, I'm elderly and can't speak Hebrew," one Christian woman said. Others said armed Israelis there bothered them.Shtern said Arabs came to West Jerusalem to shop and for leisure time (and to a lesser extent, as residents, mainly in the northern neighborhoods) from a lack of services in East Jerusalem. "The policy of aggressiveness and inequality is pushing is toward a binational reality," he said.

5. Jerusalem's 2nd biggest mall to open in 2011

Ofer Petersburg, Ynet ews , 17/09/2010

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3954217,00.html

Ramot Mall to include familiar brands, cafés and restaurants for secular and religious residents

Jerusalem's second largest mall is due to open in April 2011 in the Ramot neighborhood. Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, Phoenix Insurance CEO Eyal Lapidot and Promall Malls Management CEO Ofer Shechter attended the center's inaguration ceremony on Tuesday evening.

The mall is owned by Phoenix Holdings Ltd. of the Tshuva Group (70%) and Bayit Chadash Beyerushalaim Ltd. (30%), and designed by Architect Naama Malis, who also planned the Givatayim and Kfar Saba malls. Its commercial area will be 22,000 square meters (about 237,000 square feet) over three floors.

Ramot Mall is located on the west side of Golda Meir Boulevard, one of Jerusalem's main highways, which carries some 42,000 vehicles each day. It also constitutes a bottleneck for those trying to reach the city center and south, towards Givat Ze'ev, Givon and Ramot. Golda Meir Interchange, which connects Highway 1 (Begin Highway) to Highway 443, is just a few minutes' drive from the mall.

The mall will also offer 650 parking spaces in a protected three-floor car park and open parking lot.

A third floor was later added to the project, making the Ramot Mall the second largest in the city after the Malcha Mall, operated by the Azrieli Group.

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Alon Holdings Blue Square Israel Ltd. has rented 7,200 square meters (77,500 square feet) for a range of stores following the American "shop in shop" concept like Walmart. A number of well-known brands are included in one area, so shoppers can enjoy a wide range of products under one roof. The Ace chain, Super-Pharm and Fox have also rented space.

Fashion stores at the mall include Nine West, FOX, To Go Shoes, Crocs and Lord Kitsch. The mall will also include a number of familiar cafes and restaurants, Leumi Bank, Discount Bank and Steimatzky.

The Ramot neighborhood has some 50,000 residents, and another 13,000 live at Givon and Givat Ze'ev. Together with the other north Jerusalem neighborhoods, some 300,000 people living within 10 minutes' drive will be served by the new mall, including the secular, religious and ultra-Orthodox populations.

Security and violence

6. Palestinian shot dead by Israeli guard in East Jerusalem, sparking riots

Liel Kyzer and Nir Hasson, Haaretz , 22/9/2010

http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/palestinian-shot-dead-by-israeli-guard-in-east- jerusalem-sparking-riots-1.315144

An Israeli security guard shot and killed a Palestinian on Wednesday in the East Jerusalem district of Silwan, an area that sees frequent tensions over its settler enclave, local residents and Israeli police said.

The guard shot the 32-year-old man while driving through Silwan before dawn, a police spokesman said, adding he told investigators he had opened fire after his car was blocked and stoned by dozens of Palestinians.

A Jewish doctor living in the nearby town David was called to the site of the shooting to treat the wounded Palestinian man, who was lying some 30 meters away from the main road, but he already had no pulse.

The security guard told police that he was driving through the town alone and stopped at a gas station, despite the guidelines which forbid stopping in the local stations. He said he feared that he would be abducted after several Palestinians blocked his car and shot several times in their direction.

Local residents said the Israeli worked as a guard for the small Jewish settlement in Silwan, and that at least two other Palestinians were wounded in the shooting.

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Peace Now organization issued a statement in response to the incident calling to remove the security in East Jerusalem from private companies and place official security personnel in the area.

"Settlers erected, with state funding, a private and armed militia in Silwan which terrorizes and harms the fabric of life and the security in the are," the state said.

The guard was taken away by police for questioning, police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld told the German Press Agency DPA. According to Rosenfeld, the victim had a criminal record, and had previously been involved in rioting in the neighbourhood.

Silwan, located right below the southern section of the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem, is a focus of tension between around 300 Israeli settlers, who moved into the neighbourhood, and approximately 55,000 Palestinian residents.

Israel captured East Jerusalem along with the West Bank from Jordan in the 1967 Six Day War and regards all of the city as its capital, a status not recognized internationally. Many settlers claim a Jewish biblical birthright to the occupied territory.

Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of the state they intend to establish in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a demand at the heart of U.S.-sponsored peace talks with Israel which resumed this month.

Palestinians torched cars and threw stones and firebombs at Israeli police in Silwan last month after residents reported that settlers had tried to cross a mosque courtyard to reach an ancient spring where religious Jews conduct ritual ablutions.

7. Palestinians take to Jerusalem streets after killing

Joseph Dana, Electronicintifada , 22/09/2010

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11532.shtml

"At 3:30 or 4am I heard some noise outside of my window," Silwan resident Abdallah Rajmi told me as we stood on a narrow street in the middle of a battle between young Palestinian stone throwers and Israeli occupation forces from the Border Police. "I thought it was a simple drunken fight but then I heard a lot of noise coming from the people involved and my neighbors began waking up."

Silwan is a neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem, near the walled Old City, and is the target of an ongoing Israeli government plan to demolish dozens of Palestinian homes and replace them with Israeli settlements and a Jewish-themed park.

Rajmi recalled the events as tear gas and rocks were being thrown from both sides onto the alley where we were standing. "At this point I went to my roof to see what was happening and I saw three settler guards with 'small weapons' approach a group

12 of young Palestinian men," referring sarcastically to the guards' large Uzi assault riles. "The guards began shooting the men and everyone in Silwan woke up."

At this point, we had to move to the entrance of Rajmi's house because a storm of rocks started to rain down on us and the Border Police began to use rubber-coated steel bullets.

"I could not believe my eyes. I saw a man lying in his own blood and dying. The settler guards had just shot him in cold blood and watched him dying. He was there, on the ground, for one hour until an Israeli ambulance arrived on the scene, of course they would not allow any of us to get near him. The Israelis did, however, bring over forty settler guards and Border Police to the scene before the he was moved."

The dead man was named as Samir Sarhan, aged about 30 according to news reports, and the father of five children.

Rajmi spoke clearly while looking me straight in the eye but once could see the rage simmering over the killing. "This is not a good situation. This is an extremely hard situation and I think that chaos is going to break out here," he said. "If another one dies from his wounds sustained last night, I think that Silwan is going to blow up. You just wait and see what happens during the funeral march." The procession was to end at a cemetery near the al-Aqsa Mosque compound.

Indeed, Rajmi was correct about the unrest in Silwan boiling over. I had been in the neighborhood since 8am, right when the protests of stone throwing at Israeli Border Police started. Silwan sits in a deep valley and the area has many small winding alleys. Thus pockets of resistance were surfacing all over the place as groups of young Palestinians would sneak up on Israeli forces and rain stones upon them with calls of "leave this place" and "this is not your place, leave now!" Border Police reacted with waves of tear gas which would cover the village including the houses where women and children were hiding from the street fighting. At points, the Israeli forces would use rubber-coated steel bullets from very close range, which has often resulted in permanent or lethal injuries. Tires were set on fire and trash cans overturned. It was hard not to think of images of the second Palestinian intifada as I was trying to get photographs.

Samir Sarhan's funeral in Silwan.

This situation continued for five hours throughout Silwan. Pockets of stone-throwing here and there while tear gas covered the whole village as a form of collective punishment. Eventually, the funeral march began with calls of "God is great!" and every resident of Silwan came to the street to join the procession. As the funeral march wound its way through the narrow streets, people began attacking every settler house, car or bit of infrastructure in its path. Eventually, at the entrance of Silwan right next to the entrance to the al-Aqsa Mosque compound, which Jews refer to as the Temple Mount, and the "City of David" settler complex, the crowd exploded with rage and full-scale destruction began. Windows were smashed in the front of the City of David building and Israeli Border Police cars were flipped over and set on fire.

13 As the group moved closer to the al-Aqsa compound, a number of public buses from the Israeli company Egged were on the road. Angry Silwan residents expressed their frustration and began to destroy every window and surface of the buses possible. At one point, people entered the buses in order to rip out their seats. This happened while the bus driver was still inside. The procession reached the al-Aqsa compound and the tension died down but news agencies are now reporting that stone throwing from the al-Aqsa compound plateau began when the funeral was over and Israeli troops had entered the al-Aqsa mosque, the third holiest site in Islam.

Rajmi told me that the violence is only going to grow because of this murder. I have received word from him that one of the wounded victims from the shooting had just succumbed to his wounds. His name was not immediately available.

Surely this death could be a spark for further violence, which the people of Silwan seem to be prepared for. Unlike the "Fayyadism" -- official Palestinian Authority cooperation with the Israeli occupation --that is taking over Ramallah, the people of Silwan are ready to resist and fight regardless of the price in occupied East Jerusalem.

Joseph Dana, a writer and filmmaker living in Jerusalem, is active in direct action groups such as Taayush and Anarchists Against the Wall. His website is josephdana.com.

8. Authorities collude to “Judaise” East Jerusalem

‘Unsafe Space: The Israeli Authorities’ Failure to Protect Human Rights amid Settlements in East Jerusalem’

Report by The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) , Sept 2010

Full Report: http://www.acri.org.il/pdf/unsafe-space-en.pdf

The report’s findings include:

• Security guards employed by the Housing Ministry, serving as a private police force for Jewish settlers and costing tax-payers 54 million shekel in 2010 alone, are increasingly using force and violence against Palestinians

• Palestinians who file complaints against Jewish settlers find themselves treated as suspects and arrested

• Cases where the perpetrators of violence were Jews are closed for lack of evidence or public interest, even when live ammunition was fired and Palestinians suffered severe injuries

• Teenagers and children as young as 12 are taken in the middle of the night to the Police Station and interrogated by officers who are not qualified to investigate minors, in violation of Police procedures

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• Palestinians suffer from surveillance cameras directed into their private homes

• Restrictions on freedom of movement are selectively applied on Palestinian residents in their own neighborhoods

• Despite the dire shortage in Palestinian neighborhoods of schools, playgrounds, and medical centers, the Jerusalem Municipality and Nature and Parks Authority have given over the control of the few vacant lots remaining to political settler groups, thus barring Palestinians from accessing and using them

Attorney Nisreen Alyan: “Human rights in Silwan, Sheikh Jarrah and other neighborhoods of East Jerusalem are at an all-time low as a result of the authorities’ policy to side with settler groups. The level of tension and violence is on the rise, but the police are not providing Palestinians with the protection they need and deserve. Law enforcement is selective and the interests of settlers are routinely given priority. We call on the authorities to urgently act and bring about a much-needed policy change, which would safeguard the lives and rights of all Jerusalem residents”.

Introduction to the Report

Anyone who has toured East Jerusalem’s Palestinian neighborhoods over the past few years, especially those neighborhoods closest to the Old City, cannot help but notice the increasing number of guarded compounds, surrounded by fences with armed sentries protecting them. These compounds, situated in the midst of densely populated Palestinian neighborhoods, house today some 2,000 Jewish residents and dozens of public institutions that serve their needs. Jewish settlement in these neighborhoods did not develop in a spontaneous manner, but is rather the intended outcome of a number of well-organized political NGOs whose common stated goal is to “Judaize” East Jerusalem.

The new neighbors’ presence carries dire implications for the fabric of neighborhood life. There is much friction between the settlers and local residents, friction that has ended more than once in violent confrontations, arrests and legal proceedings, most of them initiated against Palestinians. Angry encounters have become almost routine, sometimes escalating into violent clashes with weapons and live ammunition.

From the testimonies of Palestinian residents, a troubling portrait emerges of life in the neighborhood. These residents complain of physical and verbal violence directed against them by settlers and their security guards; the intimidation of their children; various forms of harassment (including the videotaping of residents within their private homes); the barricading and closing- off of streets and public areas; and more.

Jewish settlers also complain of acts of violence perpetrated by Palestinians, such as stone throwing, vandalism, racial slurs, and more. But perhaps the most troubling phenomenon that arises from the state of mutual complaints is the biased

15 behavior of the Israeli authorities, who practice selective law enforcement and fail to provide even the most minimal protection to Palestinian locals.

Considering the difficult circumstances in these neighborhoods, Israel’s authorities should be working hard to vigorously protect the human rights of all residents, including the right to bodily integrity, personal security, freedom of movement, and privacy. Unfortunately, the testimonies of the local residents point to the opposite. Law enforcement authorities have become complicit in violating Palestinian rights; in many cases, they do not enforce the law or do so only in a discriminatory manner. At times, their proxies – the security guards employed by the state to protect Jewish residents and the police forces stationed in these areas – employ physical and verbal violence and abuse Palestinian residents. When residents decide to file official complaints they are treated too often with disregard and indifferent. Sometimes the complaints are not even investigated into.

Another area of contention that has angered Palestinians concerns the preferential treatment afforded to the needs and interests of Jewish settlers in the neighborhood, at the expense of the basic needs of Palestinian residents. This discriminatory behavior on the part of the authorities is pervasive in planning and zoning, construction and development, and in the control of the area’s scarce resources.

Much has been written about the political effects caused by the entry of Jewish NGOs and settlers into Palestinian neighborhoods. According to international law, all Israeli settlement beyond the pre-1967 borders is illegal and forbidden, whereas according to Israeli law, the annexation of East Jerusalem has brought the area under full Israeli jurisdiction. This report does not seek to analyze the political and legal ramifications of the situation in East Jerusalem, but rather to point out the violations of human rights resulting from that situation.

The state of human rights in East Jerusalem is decidedly poor, especially as it relates to home demolitions, lack of infrastructure, the severe shortage of schools, and inferior health and social services. These have been well documented (see also ACRI’s report “Human Rights in East Jerusalem: Facts and Figures.1) The current report shifts the focus to examine the direct impact of Jewish settlement in Palestinian neighborhoods on the human rights of the original local residents. Detailed within are the failings of the Israeli authorities – including the police, the Housing Ministry, and the Jerusalem Municipality – that have contributed to the violation of these basic human rights, and to the disruption of their way of life. As such, it represents the first report of its kind.

This report seeks to bring to light the stories of the Palestinian residents, to reveal the experience of life in the neighborhood as others attempt to “Judaize” it. We have chosen to focus specifically on the complaints of the Palestinian residents because of the extent of the phenomenon and its 1 “Human Rights in East Jerusalem: Facts and Figures”, by Att. Tali Nir, Anne Sucio, Ronit Sela, Att. Nisreen Alyan, Att. Oded Feller, and Mahmoud Qara’en (ACRI, May 2010) http://www.acri.org.il/pdf/eastjer2010.pdf.

16 impact on their day-to-day lives, and also to allow this community, whose voice is seldom heard in the Israeli public discourse, to sound its complaint. It should be emphasized that the evidence and testimonies presented in the report2 are merely examples of recurring phenomena, and that the report does not purport to offer a comprehensive survey of all East Jerusalem neighborhoods or of all the cases of human rights abuses. Rather it presents these examples to highlight the primary manifestations of human rights violations for which the Israeli authorities are accountable.

The report concludes with policy recommendations for the Israeli authorities. We believe that their implementation would enable residents to live their lives free of violence, abuse and harassment of various kinds.

To present a broader portrait of the subject, we have included a number of appendices at the end of the report, including a survey of the growth of Jewish settlement in Jerusalem’s Palestinian neighborhoods, a table and a map detailing the Jewish compounds in these neighborhoods, and three complete testimonies of Palestinian residents, which vividly portray the reality of life alongside the new neighbors.

It is our hope that greater public awareness of the situation will help place the matter firmly upon the public agenda and will persuade the Israeli authorities to take the appropriate measures to correct their current failings. Ultimately, it is our wish to minimize the violation of human rights of all residents of East Jerusalem.

Divisions and Barriers

9. In Jerusalem, a Barrier Comes Down

Isabel Kershner, ew York Times , 15/08/2010

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/world/middleeast/16mideast.html?_r=4&ref=mi ddleeast

JERUSALEM — The Israeli military on Sunday began dismantling a concrete barrier that protected residents of a once-troubled district on the edge of Jerusalem from Palestinian sniper fire.

At the height of the second intifada, the violent Palestinian uprising that broke out in 2000, the barrier’s tall concrete blocks had shielded the residents of Gilo, most of whom are Jews, from gunmen who took over homes and rooftops in a West Bank village across a ravine.

The makeshift barrier quickly became a symbol of the geographical intimacy of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle, and of the precarious nature of life on the seam of the conflict. Its dismantling is giving graphic expression to the calm that now prevails in the area.

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In the past only the ravine separated Gilo, built by Israel on land it captured from Jordan in the 1967 war, from the predominantly Christian West Bank village, Beit Jala, and other localities sprawling over the opposite hills near Bethlehem. Within the Jerusalem city limits defined by Israel’s leaders after the war, Gilo is considered by most Israelis to be one of the city’s southern neighborhoods. But most Palestinians consider it a settlement built on occupied land.

During the early years of the second intifada, frontline streets like Ha’anafa and Hashayish, which once featured views with biblical overtones, became a battleground. Palestinian militants fired bullets and some mortar shells across the valley, seriously wounding several people. Israeli tanks stationed on the ridge fired back.

In 2001, Israeli forces briefly took control of parts of Beit Jala for the first time since the arrival of the Palestinian Authority in the mid-1990s. In 2002, the concrete blocks went up along several streets in several sections, stretching for a total of about 600 yards.

Art students painted murals on the gray panels, depicting the hills, olive trees and houses that the wall obscured. It was like a local, downsized version of the West Bank security barrier that Israel started building shortly afterward, with the declared intention of keeping out suicide bombers. Large sections of that barrier, made up of fences and wall, are also clearly visible from parts of Gilo.

After several years of quiet, some thought it was time for the antisniper barricade to go. Residents raised the issue with the Jerusalem municipality, a city hall spokesman said, and security officials agreed that the protective blocks could be removed.

“We are not where we were in 2002,” said Yoram Biton, an officer from the military’s engineering corps, who watched as a crane lifted the blocks onto trucks. “The Palestinian Authority got stronger and has an orderly police force.”

Ricki Peretz, a resident who was out walking, praised the barricade’s removal, saying that it was time “to take away the fear.”

Many residents seemed unconvinced.

“The shooting is bound to start up again,” said Racheli Aroeti, 30, a mother of four who lives on Hashayish Street. “They are making a mistake.”

Hilda Aharoni said that she did not trust the Palestinians. “It is about our security,” Ms. Aharoni said. “The view does not interest me.”

The concrete blocks are being taken to a nearby army base. Military officials said that if necessary, they could always be brought back. Each block has been numbered, so that if the Gilo barricade has to be reassembled one day, the pieces can be placed in the right order, keeping the murals intact.

18 10. A Jerusalem neighborhood's line in the sky

Edmund Sanders, Los Angeles Times , 9/08/2010

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-jerusalem-wire- 20100809,0,4410598.story

Ultra-Orthodox Jews clash with secular and Palestinian neighbors over wires used as symbolic boundaries during the Sabbath.

The view from Jerusalem's hilltop Abu Tor neighborhood is pretty good. Too good, some might say.

From my apartment terrace, I can glimpse the major tourist sites: Old City walls, the golden Dome of the Rock and Temple Mount, the King David Hotel and Mt. Zion, believed to be the location of the Last Supper.

But when clashes erupt between Israeli police and Palestinian demonstrators, I can also watch tear-gas clouds rise from the Arab village of Silwan below. And every morning, the sun rises over a massive concrete wall, part of Israel's West Bank security barrier.

Abu Tor is often heralded as one of Jerusalem's few mixed neighborhoods, where Israelis and Palestinians live together. In reality, however, there's not much mingling. Living here often reveals more about the divisions of Jerusalem than its unity.

Lately it's been a battle for the skyline. Blue-and-white Israeli flags are popping up on the rooftops of Jewish homes. Palestinians dominate the evening landscape with their green-lit mosque minarets.

And then there's the mysterious high-wire that hangs outside my office window. It's a thin metal wire attached to two 30-foot-high posts on opposite sides of the street, with a little red ribbon tied in the middle.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews keep putting it up. Palestinian kids keep tearing it down.

The other day, a brown maintenance truck drove up, and two Orthodox workers, with black hats and side locks, sweated for nearly an hour reattaching the wire with long poles. The next morning, it was lying across the road. The workers returned the same day and put it up again.

It's become a kind of neighborhood barometer. Every morning I glance out the window to see who's ahead.

The war of the wire started about a year ago, neighborhood kids say. They cut it down because the wire ensnares their kites, and this is peak season for kite-flying in wind- swept Abu Tor.

The odd thing is that few in the neighborhood seem to know exactly what this wire is for. Theories abound.

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Palestinians assume it's some sort of secret border to separate the neighborhood or warn Jews against crossing into the "wrong" area. "Palestinian terrorists are on this side," joked one Palestinian, "and the good Jews stay over there."

Nonsense, said a Jewish Israeli, who said the red ribbon must be a marker for tour groups so they don't get lost.

A German aid official who lives upstairs heard that the wire — one of a few strung around the neighborhood — demarcates some kind of "blessed zone" during Jewish holidays. Because our building is outside the zone, he added, "if you want to be blessed, you'll have to cross the street."

A secular Jewish neighbor said he thought the wire had some religious significance, but he wasn't sure what it was and grumbled, "The whole thing is nonsense."

A little investigation revealed that everyone was a little bit right, but mostly wrong. The wires are part of eruv, a boundary marker that delineates an area where Jews may carry things during the Sabbath. According to religious laws, Jews may not carry anything in public — whether a baby or house keys — unless the area has been closed off by eruv markers.

In recent years, ultra-Orthodox religious groups in Jerusalem have been putting them up throughout the city. That's angered many secular Jews, like my landlord, who think the eruvs will draw Orthodox families into secular neighborhoods and possibly hurt property values. One Jewish college professor was arrested for dismantling an eruv near his home. I've started eyeing my landlord a little more closely, wondering if I'll catch him with wire cutters.

His concern is economic: He's been trying to sell the building. With Abu Tor's sweeping views, I assumed this place would get snapped up. It's like beachfront property in Southern California or having a view of Central Park in New York.

But as a real estate broker explained, Abu Tor is a tough sell. Prices are among the steepest in the city. Few Palestinians have that kind of cash, and Jewish Israelis who can afford multimillion-dollar homes don't always feel comfortable living in a mixed community where neighbors fight over a wire.

Turns out this amazing view, which I feel so lucky to have, isn't one everyone wants to see.

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11. Football and the wall: The divided soccer community of Jerusalem

James Montague, CNN, 17/09/2010

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/SPORT/football/09/14/football.israel.palestine.beitar/

* Jerusalem divided between Palestinian and Israeli football teams * CNN followed Palestinian champions Jabal al Mukaber and Israeli giants Beitar Jerusalem * Jabal al Mukaber hail from East Jerusalem * Beitar famous for links with Likud and hardcore fan base who chant anti- Arab songs

Jerusalem (CNN) -- They are two football teams from the same city, based just a few miles apart but who play in different worlds.

Beitar Jerusalem -- Israel's most popular team -- and Jabal al Mukaber -- Palestinian champions of east Jerusalem -- play either side of the wall that separates the two communities in the city.

Though neighbors in the same town, they will never play each other in a game, as the divisions of Middle East are played out in microcosm. Beitar -- notorious for its anti-Arab fan base -- has the carrot of UEFA Champions League football dangled in front of it; the Palestinian side is lucky to be allowed to fulfill its fixtures on the other side of the separation barrier.

Both played on the same weekend; two teams, leagues apart. Jerusalem can be a confusing place of division and barriers, ostracized neighborhoods and communities living cheek by jowl without knowledge of the other's existence.

As the first direct peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians in over two years begin, nothing highlights the divisions, and the common ground, more than Jerusalem's two biggest football teams, who live in each other's shadow with different opponents, different religions, different languages and different economic fortunes.

They are also divided by footballing bureaucracy, as much as by any physical barrier: Palestine is part of the Asian Football Confederation, Israel a member of Europe's governing body UEFA.

Jabal al Mukaber is the biggest of as many as ten Palestinian football teams that hail from Jerusalem. They are not allowed to play any of their games at home and instead have to travel through the separation barrier to the Faisal al Husseini stadium in Al Ram for the start of the West Bank Premier League.

One hour before the start of the season and the Faisal al Husseini stadium is dark, empty and silent. Outside, a broken street light flickers intermittently, periodically

21 revealing the impotent slogans of resistance covering the separation barrier that runs just meters from the home of Palestinian football.

The stationary gloom is only broken by a falafel seller -- busily kneading balls of chick pea in anticipation of the opening match between Jabal al Mukaber and Al- Bireh, their rivals from nearby Ramallah -- and the grounds man, smoking a cigarette and nodding sagely.

"Ramadan," he offered, by way of explanation before turning on the floodlights. "Don't worry; they will come." The fans trickled in, slowly at first before thousands arrived once fasting had finished.

"It should take twenty minutes over there," pointed Mohammed Ewsat, a Jabal al Mukaber fan who had arrived after iftar to watch his team play. "We are making a big diversion to get here, it takes maybe an hour and a half, and then we do the same after the game."

Ever since Jibril Rajoub, who famously ran Yasser Arafat's West Bank security apparatus with an iron fist, was appointed head of the Palestinian Football Association, football in the West Bank has seen something of a reversal of fortune.

Three years ago road blocks made it impossible for any regular league matches between teams in the West Bank to take place. Even if the teams did make it through, the referee usually didn't.

Now the league, with a smattering of professional clubs, is into its second season, whilst the building of the national stadium two years ago was itself a massive coup.

But for teams like Jabal al Mukaber, who come from the wrong side of the wall, football is still dominated by roadblocks and hardship.

They hail from their eponymous district of south east Jerusalem, where the golden Dome of the Rock -- which adorns the club's badge -- can still be seen. In Israel the district is feared for its alleged extremism and links to terrorism. As the players warmed up, more fans stream in after getting through the roadblocks.

"It's good to make something beautiful in this life. And we have nothing like sport to make something beautiful in our lives," Mohammed continued when asked whether he begrudged the journey he had to take to watch the champions.

Just as he finished, the stand fell silent as the team approached the fans. Before every match, the Jabal al Mukaber players pray with their supporters, reciting the first verse from the Quran.

"This is my country and my club," Mohammed continued, before joining the players and crowd to play. "Sport gives us some hope, of another life. Maybe it's not a very important thing [to you] but we feel there is not anything in our life that is good [but Jabal al Mukaber]."

22

Jerusalem's other team exists in a parallel universe of comparative plenty. That same weekend, four miles away, the Teddy Kollek Stadium prepares for its first game of the season: Beitar Jerusalem versus Maccabi Tel Aviv in the Israeli Premier League.

It could grace any European capital city. Its wide boulevards and (kosher) hot dog stalls are full of excited young fans with equally as excited fathers, clutching tickets costing 80 sheckles, twenty times what it would cost to go and see Jabal al Mukaber.

Israeli soldiers wrapped in yellow and black scarves over their green khaki uniforms march towards the merchandise stalls. Street hawkers sell what they can before being moved on.

One is selling Beitar Jerusalem branded kippahs. Next to him an Orthodox rabbi sells religious CDs. Beitar boasts, according to some estimates, over a million supporters. It also has a strong right-wing political identity and is closely aligned with Likud.

It boasts Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert and current prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu as fans. Yet there is also a darker side. It is renowned in Israel for its violent, far-right fans, especially the ultra group La Familia, who regularly chant "death to the Arabs".

No Arab or Muslim has ever played for the club. When it was mooted that the Israeli international Abass Suan -- an Israeli Arab -- was to sign for Beitar, the fans rioted outside the stadium and the move was cancelled.

Over the past few seasons the Israeli Football Association has docked the club points and banned the supporters from the Teddy for chanting anti-Islamic songs. La Familia responded by breaking into the IFA's offices, daubing death threats against the president in paint on its walls.

When an Israeli journalist made a film about the club's supporters last year, her home was attacked and several arrests made. "This is the team of the people...known for [being on] the right. These are the people who love their country, who fought in the wars," explains Adel, an erudite Beitar fan in smart designer clothes watching the game.

"It's not like everybody hates the Arabs, but everybody agrees it is our country, that we came here first and we have the right for this country." Before kick off, an army of children hand out leaflets from the police, urging the fans to give up their violence.

In return they would then allow stewards, rather than the authorities, to patrol the stadium. La Familia, however, are livid that the club would work with the police against the fans, and hand out their own leaflets, threatening to turn the ground into a "cemetery" in protest.

23 "We have a little problem with the club, who wants to work with the police and get the fans out of the stadium," explained Guy, a Beitar fan and member of La Familia supervising the hand out. "This is not acceptable. This club is ours, it's our dreams and it's our life."

"I don't have a wife, I don't have children, all I have is Beitar. Why are they trying to take this away from me?" Jerusalem's two teams experienced contrasting fortunes on the pitch too.

Jabal al Mukaber eased to a 2-0 victory; Beitar succumbed to a late, result- deciding goal. With the police watching it wasn't until after the final whistle when the two worlds collided.

On the bus home a group of young fans hurled abuse at an Arab woman in her 50s and her young daughter. "They are singing 'Arabs go home', 'Arabs are stupid'," whispered a young female Israeli settler, traveling back to her home near Jericho.

The group, ten strong, chant louder and louder. One throws a packet of sunflower seeds over the woman. She sits silently, head slightly bowed.

Everyone on the bus -- tourists, football fans, American students alike -- all look the other way.

Silwan

12. How IsraeliPalestinian battle for Jerusalem plays out in one neighborhood

Christa Case Bryant, Staff writer, The Christian Science Monitor, 15/09/2010

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2010/0915/How-Israeli- Palestinian-battle-for-Jerusalem-plays-out-in-one-neighborhood

The Israeli-Palestinian battle for Jerusalem is playing out in Silwan between Arab residents, religious Jews, and a municipality looking to revitalize its storied global brand.

The second round of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks under way culminates tonight at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence in Jerusalem, where Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is expected to arrive for further face-to-face negotiations on core issues.

The meeting’s unusual location underscores Jerusalem’s emergence as not only the thorniest obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peace but a defining battleground for sovereignty.

That fight is playing out – between Arab residents, religious Jews, and a municipality looking to revitalize its storied global brand – in the predominantly

24 Arab neighborhood of Silwan. Nestled in the shadow of the Old City walls, Silwan serves as a microcosm of the broader tension between Israeli and Palestinian interests, in which every plot of land is seen not just as home, but a stake in one’s homeland. Seeking to preserve home – and homeland

Fakhri Abu Diab shuffles out his gate to sweep stray trash and bits of rubble out of the narrow path to his home in the neighborhood.

But that’s about all the enthusiasm he can muster as he prepares to welcome guests. Why? Mr. Diab daily fears his home will be destroyed.

Once inside, he pulls out the Israeli demolition order that arrived on the eve of his daughter’s wedding last fall. Yes, he built without a permit, but he spent 10 years trying in vain to get one.

His home is now one of dozens affected by the Jerusalem municipality’s plans for an archaeological park. Jews and Christians believe the biblical King David once reigned here, and his son Solomon planted trees in the area, known today as King’s Garden.

“Who are more important? The families who live here now, or those 3,000 years ago?” asks Diab.

But for Israeli Jews, whose families endured millenniums of persecution, such efforts to “redeem” Jerusalem involve not just the preservation of holy sites, but the preservation of their nation.

“Jewish history, Jewish roots basically start from two places: the Temple Mount and the City of David,” says Daniel Luria, executive director of Ateret Cohanim, an organization that facilitates Jewish development in Jerusalem. “So when we talk about Jerusalem, we’re not talking about some outer neighborhood on the way to Tel Aviv. We’re talking about the places where prophets walked, where kings prayed, where basically the nation of Israel started.” Why Silwan is on the front line

The stakes are high; US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said these talks may be the last chance to agree on the two-state solution that many have long envisioned as the key to Middle East peace.

Israel never formally included East Jerusalem in the settlement freeze set to expire at the end of this month, a freeze Palestinians say must be extended to preserve the territory of their future state. The steady expansion of Jewish areas throughout East Jerusalem – through Israeli property laws, a Byzantine permitting process for new homes, and millions of dollars in state support – jeopardizes a key component of that statehood dream: a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem.

On the city’s flanks, numerous Jewish developments have populations in the tens of thousands. But it is the smaller enclaves in the highly sensitive areas around the

25 Old City, such as Silwan, that have become the frontlines in this intensifying battle for sovereignty.

“There is a growing impression,” stated a 2009 report by Israeli human rights group Ir Amim, “that Silwan is the keystone to a sweeping and systematic process, whose aim is to gain control of the Palestinian territories that surround the Old City, to cut the Old City off from the urban fabric of East Jerusalem, and to connect it to Jewish settlement blocs in northeast Jerusalem and the E-1 area.” A millionaire's plan to transform Jerusalem

Mayor Nir Barkat, a self-made millionaire who took office in 2008, sees Jerusalem’s future in much different terms. (Editor's note: The original version misstated Mr. Barkat's financial status.)

He’s not oblivious to the fact that Jerusalem is a relatively poor city losing 17,000 young Israelis per year to emigration, that the Jewish majority has slipped to 65 percent and will be lost altogether by 2035 if current trends prevail, and that Palestinian Jerusalemites, living in vastly inferior neighborhoods, feel increasingly alienated.

Mr. Barkat is also keenly aware that he is in charge of a metropolis that for centuries has been one of the most celebrated crossroads of humanity – a center of worship, culture, and commerce. And for him, that is the key to revitalizing the city and endearing it to a world more apt to criticize Jerusalem than to come taste its heavenly hummus.

The dazzle of New York, Paris, and Rome all draw more than 40 million visitors annually, notes Mr. Barkat’s foreign affairs aide, Stephan Miller, freshly returned from an August mayoral tour touting the city’s 3,000-year-old brand in North America.

“Cyprus, an island, gets 10 million per year,” he says, eyebrows jumping. “Jerusalem – a brand important to 3.4 billion people of faith around the world – gets on average 2 million.”

If Jerusalem can match Cyprus within a decade, they estimate it will create as many as 150,000 new jobs, roughly doubling the city’s job market.

The mayor, coming from the “win-win” world of hi-tech deals, envisions projects like the King’s Garden archaeological park as a way to not only woo tourists and make the city more attractive to young Israeli families, but also to bring better management to Arab areas such as Silwan.

Such projects would improve roads and sewage, and add new buildings such as a $10 million community center planned for Diab’s community.

The trickle-down effect, the municipality foresees, would open up more job opportunities for Arabs and give their children a better start in life through higher standards of living and improved schooling.

26 While roughly 2 in 3 Arab residents pay property taxes, the lack of building permits they obtain means that almost none pay the separate fees associated with buying and building homes – depriving their communities of a crucial cash pool for roads, schools, and other development, says Yakir Segev, the city councilor in charge of East Jerusalem.

Complicating the situation is the fact that Palestinian Jerusalemites refuse to vote or run for local government positions on principle.

“Cooperating with the municipality is sometimes perceived as accepting Israeli sovereignty,” says Mr. Segev. “We’re to blame to some extent for not overcoming the fact that these guys have chosen not to be represented, and then I think the [Arab] community can blame themselves for not cooperating and paying what they should have, and working with us to figure out how to help them.” Silwan: Top priority in wider plan

The mayor has tackled Silwan as one of his first priorities in the wider effort to transform Jerusalem – using as a blueprint a massive rezoning plan he inherited, which calls for a green belt around much of the Old City.

But Palestinians in Silwan deeply resent what they see as an invasion of an area that they say has long been theirs, although satellite images gathered by the Jerusalem municipality show very little development until the 1990s.

As part of a compromise, the owners of 66 of the 88 Palestinian homes affected by the King's Garden plan will be allowed to apply retroactively for permits, though approval of the permits is not guaranteed.

They will also be allowed to build additional units intended to accommodate the residents of the remaining 22 homes – including Diab’s – that will be demolished to make room for the park.

But such proposals satisfy neither religious Jews, who seek a stricter interpretation of the law, nor residents.

“[Israel is] demolishing family, future, and any opportunity of peace between Israelis and Palestinians,” says Abu Diab. “I hope for me and my children’s sake a third intifada won’t happen. But if it does, it will be not just local, but regional as well. There are 20,000 Abu Diab families – in Amman, Saudi Arabia, US – and that’s just a small sample.”

But despite the intense emotions around the city's status, Ir Amim spokeswoman Orly Noy sees merit in tackling it head-on.

“We think that a solution is still possible in Jerusalem and in the conflict in general – and,” she adds, “that Jerusalem can, in fact, serve as a key for getting to this overall solution.”

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13. Contesting Past and Present at Silwan

Joel Beinin 1, Middle East Report , 17/09/2010

http://www.merip.org/mero/mero091710.html

On September 1, Elad -- a Hebrew acronym for “To the City of David” -- convened its eleventh annual archaeological conference at the “City of David National Park” in the Wadi Hilwa neighborhood of Silwan. Silwan, home to about 45,000 people, is one of 28 Palestinian villages incorporated into East Jerusalem and annexed by Israel after the June 1967 war. It lies in a valley situated a short walk beyond the Dung Gate of Jerusalem’s Old City. Elad, a militant, religious, settler organization, claims that Silwan is the biblical City of David mentioned in the second book of Samuel and that the Pool of Shiloah (Siloam) located there watered King Solomon’s garden.

The public was invited to tour recent excavations and hear a program of lectures advancing Elad’s thesis that its unearthed findings prove its historical claims. Palestinian community activists in Silwan joined with Israeli Jews from Ta‘ayush (Living Together) and “Solidarity with Sheikh Jarrah” to organize a demonstration exposing Elad’s political manipulation of archaeology. The call for the demonstration explained: “We will be there to remind everyone that the Elad Association is not a research institution interested in archaeology, but a political tool for the Judaization of East Jerusalem through the expulsion of the Palestinian inhabitants. We will remind them that they are in an occupied village called Silwan, and not in a Biblical tourist site.”

The protest organizers continued: “Various state organs that are supportive of Elad’s project, like the Israeli police, the Jerusalem municipality, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and many others, are trying…to hide from the public eye the fact that these excavations are carried out in the service of the settlements.”

Historical “Facts on the Ground”

The atmosphere in Wadi Hilwa was already heated. On August 26, for the third time according to Arab residents, Elad settlers attempted to break down the iron door of the mosque near the Pool of Shiloah using an acetylene torch. Wadi Hilwa resident Muhammad Qara’in called the Jerusalem police for assistance, but the duty officer hung up on him. When clashes began between Arab residents and settlers the Border Guards arrived and began shooting live ammunition and tear gas at the Palestinians. Two settler cars were torched and the windshields of several others were smashed in the melée. Police cordoned off Wadi Hilwa. But this measure did not prevent the continuation of clashes the next night, since the aggravating factors -- the Elad settlers -- are in the middle of the neighborhood.

Since 1994 Elad has been underwriting archaeological excavations to supply proof for its version of Silwan’s history. In the process, they are destroying evidence of the

1 Joel Beinin is professor of Middle East history at Stanford University and a contributing editor of Middle East Report. He filed this article from Jerusalem.

28 presence of many other peoples and cultures on the site – 21 strata dating from the time of the Canaanites, who established the first permanent settlement in Silwan some 5,000 years ago, and the levels of the Muslims who ruled the place from the mid- seventh to the early twentieth centuries.

Elad also began seizing Palestinian homes in Silwan in 1991 and settling Jewish families in them, using dubious legal maneuvers that were criticized by a 1992 commission of inquiry appointed by the Israeli government. But Jerusalem municipal executive authorities have done nothing to remove Elad from the Palestinian homes it has illegally occupied. Elad now controls about 25 percent of the Wadi Hilwa neighborhood as well as other properties in Silwan.

Some Israeli archaeologists accept Elad’s claims that its excavations are “scientific” and unrelated to its settlement project. Other renowned Israeli archaeologists contest Elad’s version of Silwan’s biblical history. According to Benjamin Kedar, chairman of the board of the Israel Antiquities Authority, Elad is “an organization with a declared ideological agenda, which presents the history of the City of David in a biased way.” To date, no conclusive archaeological evidence affirming the presence of King David or King Solomon or of a Jewish temple on the scale described in the Bible has been found in Silwan or elsewhere.

Policing Protest

Although the Elad tour and conference were in a national park and open to the public, police and Border Guards blocked the access of the demonstrators on the grounds that, “You are leftists,” as one officer put it. Daniel Dukarevich, a physician and an immigrant to Israel from the former Soviet Union, attempted to cross the police barrier and attend the conference. Border Guards seized him and beat him viciously. Dukarevich was immediately surrounded by a group of young women who bravely tried to protect him -- and themselves after the Border Guards began beating them as well. Several demonstrators recorded the incident and later uploaded their video footage to YouTube. Others chanted, “Brave soldiers are beating [female] demonstrators,” while drummers, a regular presence at demonstrations, kept up a military cadence. Dukarevich was eventually dragged away by police with blood streaming down his face. Police can later be seen ushering a settler car through the barricade.

Veteran CBS correspondent Lesley Stahl and a crew from “60 Minutes” happened to be on the scene to do a story about Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem. Stahl’s jaw dropped and her face became visibly strained as she watched the beating. When some semblance of calm was restored, she interviewed a Wadi Hilwa resident who told her, “The Elad organization will not be successful in its attempts to falsify the history of this region and to ignore the indigenous people of the village. The collusion between Israeli authorities and ‘private’ settlement enterprises such as Elad are clear to us all -- highlighted by the military’s attempts to shut down this demonstration today.” Stahl’s story has not yet aired.

Later, ten more Jewish demonstrators who attempted to enter the conference were arrested. They were taken off to the jail and courthouse complex housed in former pilgrim hostels in the Russian Compound -- a picturesque plot of land in central

29 Jerusalem originally owned by the Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox cathedral. After the British conquered Jerusalem in 1917 they expropriated the area, except for the church itself, to build a government center. The state of Israel compensated the Soviet Union for the land in 1964 with $3.5 million worth of oranges.

Five of the detained demonstrators were released at 1:30 am the next day. One of them, Matan Cohen, is a student at Hampshire College and a member of Students for Justice in Palestine on that campus. He was one of the prominent organizers of the campaign that led to Hampshire’s February 2009 divestment from six corporations with holdings in companies complicit in Israeli human rights violations in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. (College administrators claim the divestment was unrelated to the activists’ demands, though the president acknowledged “the good work of Students for Justice in Palestine that brought this issue to the attention of the committee.”) Cohen had spent most of his summer break working with the renowned Israeli filmmaker, Udi Aloni, teaching film to youth in the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank. As a condition of his release, police officers demanded that Cohen sign a document consenting not to return to East Jerusalem for three months. Although he was due to return to Hampshire for his senior year within days, he told them, “I’m not signing anything and I’m not leaving before the others are also released.” Frustrated with Cohen’s resolute stand, the police eventually let him go without conditions.

When the court opened for business on September 2, Cohen and ten others who had participated in the demonstration were present to check on the status of those who had not yet been released. There they met Nasir Ghawi, the head of household of one of the four Palestinian families who have been evicted from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem, also to make way for Jewish settlers. Further evictions are threatened. Ghawo is the most articulate spokesperson for all the Sheikh Jarrah evictees. He and his lawyer were in court to argue that someone acting for the Sephardic Community Committee, which claims to own his home, had falsified the eviction order by adding names not included on the original court document to it. “I only want basic justice,” he said. “If the document is falsified, than we should be returned to our home and the settlers removed until the case is settled.” The court postponed the hearing on the forgery question until November and the Ghawi family remains in the street. It had earlier ruled similarly with regard to the Hanun family.

The relationship between the Jews who had participated in the Silwan demonstration and Nasir Ghawi was warm, familiar and mutually supportive. All of the Jews present were regular participants in the weekly demonstrations held at Sheikh Jarrah since November 2009 to protest the eviction of Palestinian families from the neighborhood. Ghawi knew most of them by name or face. He speaks fluent Hebrew, which makes it easier for those who do not speak Arabic to get to know him well. (Ta‘ayush has members who are Palestinian citizens of Israel, but the Jerusalem branch is an entirely Jewish group today, although they work closely with Palestinians in both Sheikh Jarrah and the south Hebron hills.)

Since most East Jerusalem Palestinians speak at least some Hebrew, there is less pressure on Jewish activists there to learn Arabic. Sara Benninga, who was prominent in the demonstration at Silwan (and also in the Sheikh Jarrah demonstrations), due to her extraordinary stamina in leading chants in Arabic, Hebrew and English, said: “We

30 know we should learn Arabic. I have tried to do it several times. But it is hard to find the time while working, going to school and maintaining political activity.” The language dynamics are somewhat different in the West Bank, where many of the prominent young Jewish activists speak at least enough Arabic for basic communication and several, like Matan Cohen, are totally fluent. Many West Bank men, of course, speak Hebrew because of their extensive experience in Israeli jails. But for Cohen and his peers in Anarchists Against the Wall, the language of communication whenever possible is Arabic.

More surprising than the cordiality between Arab and Jewish protesters is the intimacy between Jewish protesters and the police. The police and the protesters recognize each other and address each other by name. It is obvious who the police commanders are; the officers imagine that the demonstrators have a similar hierarchy, although this is far from the case. At the Silwan protest, the police commander asked Asaf Sharon, a Ph.D. student in political philosophy at Stanford University, to step aside and speak to him one on one. Sharon later reported that the officer told him, “If you calm your people down, there won’t be any more arrests. If you don’t, I will start arresting more of you” (Dukarevich had already been taken away). Sharon held up his wrists as though they were already handcuffed and said, “Take me first.” He was later arrested for trying to enter the conference area.

A ew Protest Generation

At Sheikh Jarrah and in Silwan, as in the villages of the West Bank, the Jewish protesters demonstratively disregard the authority of the Israeli state, although Palestinians must be more circumspect since they would likely suffer grave consequences for openly challenging the occupation authorities. The Jewish protesters aim to make the police and the army pay as high a price as possible for continuing the occupation. Every demonstration requires the deployment of extra police or soldiers to a place where they would not normally be. Every arrest requires the time and energy of the court system, whether or not detainees are eventually charged. Every instance of gratuitous police brutality -- and there have been many in East Jerusalem, even according to Israeli courts -- delegitimizes the police, exposes their political bias and draws more establishment personalities into the movement.

Intense direct confrontation with the authority of the Israeli state is a considered strategy, according to one of the influential behind-the-scenes organizers of the Jewish participation in the protests in Sheikh Jarrah. It is designed to produce “a transition from protest to struggle…. We are there to struggle in a subversive way.” The protest organizers are consciously striving to create a conflict between the many “left Zionists” among whom it has become fashionable to attend the weekly demonstrations in Sheikh Jarrah -- people like prestigious Hebrew University professors Menachem Brinker, Moshe Halbertal, Avishai Margalit and Zeev Sternhell, novelist David Grossman, and former speaker of the Knessset Avraham Burg, who typically function as a loyal opposition -- and the Israeli state apparatus. But the young organizers are not concerned with ideology as such.

Some call themselves Zionists; some do not. Some are secular; some are modern Orthodox or formerly observant but respectful of religion. As such, the new protest generation has a very different social makeup than the mostly older and resolutely

31 secularist “left Zionists” of Peace Now, the nearly defunct Meretz party and the Labor Party. The protests are animated by social networks that have been formed over the last decade in struggles against Israel’s separation barrier and efforts to protect the Palestinians of the south Hebron hills from the depredations of violent, radical settlers. The Arab and Jewish protesters regard the creeping Judaization of East Jerusalem -- which is now most aggressive in Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah -- as a mortal threat to Palestinian-Israeli peace. Rather than ideology, the glue that binds the Jewish protesters together and the Jews and the Palestinians of Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan to each other is moral outrage over blatant injustice and discriminatory application of Israeli law.

However many states there may or may not be on the horizon in Israel and Palestine, the new generation of Israeli protesters see themselves as building a culture of peace and living together with Arabs in opposition to the segregationist version of peace -- “us here, them there” -- long promoted by the “left Zionist” peace camp. This approach to peace remains marginal in Israeli society, although it has many Palestinian proponents, even among those who remain committed to a two-state solution. It is surely more hopeful than the diplomatic exercise now underway.

Jerusalem Light Railway

14. J'lem train company asks passengers: 'Do you mind traveling with Arabs?'

By Nir Hasson, Haaretz , 20/08/2010

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/j-lem-train-company-asks-passengers-do- you-mind-traveling-with-arabs-1.309101

With capital light rail raring to go, operator surveys residents' attitudes.

Jerusalem's light rail project is now in its final phase, with its train cars set to operate within less than a year. Ahead of the scheduled activation, CityPass, the rail system's concessionaire, is conducting a poll to better gauge its public-relations standing among Jerusalemites.

The survey asks residents various questions related to whether they intend to use the new train system. Respondents are asked how they feel about a number of practical issues, such as the planned routes and the measures to make commuting easier.

The two last questions, however, deal with the fact that the train is also slated to serve several stations in Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, including Shoafat, Sheikh Jarrah and others near the Old City.

"The light rail includes three stations in Shoafat. Does that present a problem for you?" the questionnaire asks. In another question: "All passengers, Jewish and Arab, enter the train freely and without the driver's inspection. Is that a problem for you?"

32 Respondents are asked to indicate their level of concern from 1 (not a concern ) to 5 (very concerning ).

Among those surveyed yesterday was Ofra Ben-Artzi, a left-wing activist and the sister-in-law of Sara Netanyahu, wife of the prime minister. "I told the pollster, 'Imagine this kind of question being asked in London or New York.' It testifies to the level of racism we've reached," she said.

Preparing for the worst

Over the past few years, Ben-Artzi has called to task several French companies involved in the project for building east of the Green Line.

"I tried to confront the company during the project's early stages," she said. "I don't plan on using this train because it passes through the occupied territories, but this questionnaire shows just how deeply they've dug themselves in."

"This survey smacks of racism," said Jerusalem city council member Yosef Alalu. "If you thought all the problems would end once the train started running, now we see the sort of problems that can crop up in the future."

One of the most pressing remaining problems related to the light rail is providing security against potential terror attacks. As it can hold up to 10 more passengers than a bus, the light rail is considered a higher-value target for terrorists.

Sources close to the project, however, have said that because the rail network would serve all residents of the city - both Jewish and Arab - the chance of a terrorist attack is low.

A deal struck between the state and CityPass holds that the Public Security Ministry will be tasked with providing the light rail with security. Government officials close to the project issued a statement saying, "We're pleased to serve public-transportation users in Jerusalem without distinction."

"There is no country in the world dealing with the security problems Jerusalem faces on a daily basis," a response from CityPass said.

"There are questions that arise when dealing with public transportation in Jerusalem - whether it's a bus or light rail - that don't arise elsewhere in the world, and they need to be addressed," it said.

15. Jerusalem trains 'to be divided by gender'

Mark Weiss, The Telegraph 24/09/2010

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/7961486/Jerusalem- trains-to-be-divided-by-gender.html

The company constructing a light railway in Jerusalem is considering operating

33 separate carriages for men and women to serve the city's large ultra-Orthodox community.

The ultra-Orthodox, distinctive in their black coats and hats, make up about one third of Jerusalem's 750,000 population and wield considerable clout in municipal affairs.

A number of buses that pass through religious neighbourhoods are already segregated, with women confined to the back of the vehicle.

There have been cases of women who refused to move to the back of these buses being verbally and even physically abused.

CityPass CEO Yair Naveh said the light rail is designed to serve everyone, and he saw no reason why every third or fourth carriage shouldn't be a "kosher car" to serve the needs of the ultra-Orthodox community.

However the Jerusalem municipality, which opposes gender segregation, and the transport ministry, will have the final say.

Last month CityPass was criticised after putting out a questionnaire asking potential passengers if they would mind if Palestinians travelled on the light rail. The first route to operate will serve Jewish and Arab neighbourhoods.

The light rail, which eventually will cover the whole city, is scheduled to begin operating next April.

Future plans

16. Watch this space – Jerusalem Metropolitan Park

Peggy Cidor, Jerusalem Post, 8/13/2010

http://www.jpost.com/LocalIsrael/InJerusalem/Article.aspx?id=184586

The Jerusalem Metropolitan Park project will see the city surrounded by easily accessible leisure and sports sites, bicycle paths and picnic areas – not to mention abundant flora and fauna.

Who says dreams don’t come true? At least as far as “green” dreams are concerned, it seems that Jerusalem, a city that itself figures in so many dreams, has some good news. For the first time in the country’s history of environmental projects, the capital has shown that it can be done with wisdom and in harmony.

The Jerusalem Metropolitan Park – a green belt of parks surrounding the city on three sides, combining environmental preservation with understated development – is taking shape, following a historic partnership between environmentalists and industry.

“In fact,” explains Eyal Haimovski, deputy CEO of the Jerusalem Development Authority (JDA), which is co-sponsoring and developing the project, “the green trend

34 has become such an integral part of the establishment, that veteran green activists sometime feel they are living in a daydream.”

One of the most surprising aspects of the project is the fact that it is the result of the Safdie Plan for the development of west Jerusalem, which had been rejected by the district planning committee following fierce opposition by residents and environmental organizations. At that time, the designers offered the green belt of the park as a sort of compensation. The plan was canceled, but the green areas were already allocated, and now they are emerging as a real blessing for the city.

It all started about six years ago. In one of the many suggestions raised at meetings of municipal representatives, the JDA and the government, looking for ways to attract young families to the city, the issue of quality of life was raised.

“The idea was to launch a serious plan to strengthen the city by attracting young people, students, young couples and families from the center of the country,” recalls Haimovski. “It suddenly became clear that we had to offer more. Besides affordable housing and jobs and stipends for students, we also had to provide a high quality of life that would be consistent with what could be found in the well-todo cities in central Israel. It turns out that parks and outdoor facilities were the answer.”

According to Haimovski the project, which has been approved and is almost ready to be implemented, has already cost hundreds of millions of shekels, not including maintenance, which will be running up a bill forever. There are no sponsors, no philanthropy, no fund-raising. It all comes from public money – from the taxpayers for the taxpayers.

Although environmental activists and developers are working together on the Jerusalem Metropolitan Park in a rare show of harmonious interaction, there is still a certain amount of concern and even anxiety.

“Two issues are at stake here,” explains Avraham Shaked, the regional coordinator for the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel in the Judean Hills region. “The quality of development first. Is it going to be sensitive to the need to protect the important rural and historical nature heritage we have in this region? And secondly, what kind of maintenance will we have once the project is completed? The way these two issues are handled will determine whether we have a successful achievement or a disaster.”

According to Shaked, nothing has been assured as yet, and the threats to nature preservation are still there, be they in the form of natural disasters (e.g., fires in summer) or infrastructure requirements.

Another issue is the somewhat opposing needs of nature preservation versus the leisure and entertainment needs of the residents. “We used all the sensitivity, wisdom, knowledge and experience we could, and quite a substantial amount of modesty regarding nature’s rights in order to create a safe haven,” says landscape architect Asaf Shaked, head of the project.

35 “We did everything we could to prevent this project from turning into another field of contention between developers and environmentalists.”

THE RESULT is coming along at an impressive rate.

While the parks are already open to the public, once all the work is completed, four large parks will encompass the city from the northeast (French Hill and Pisgat Ze’ev) through the northwest (Arazim Valley near Ramot), to Motza and the Beit Zayit Valley and down to the south to Gilo, along the slopes of the Refaim River.

Except for a narrow gap between Ein Kerem and Ir Ganim, the four parks in fact create a continuous green belt. On the east side, due mostly to the topographic situation, the only green spot will be the Emek Tzurim National Park, the closest green spot outside the Old City walls toward the Holy Basin.

The parks will include leisure and sports sites (the Sportek near Ramot), bicycle paths (in all four parks), picnic areas and outdoor activities (in all the parks), a large part of them adapted for the disabled, in a vast green and natural area, which will give the city a hearty green lung.

Still not ready but on the agenda are small cafes, restrooms, and in the Arazim Valley park a hall for cultural events. Organized tours to acquaint the public with the flora and fauna of the area will also be offered.

One of the things that Asaf Shaked insisted on was accessibility. “We wanted the parks to be very close to the inhabited areas, not somewhere far to get to. We want to create the feeling that the parks are a real part of the city. No one will have to go too far from each neighborhood to get there. They are really accessible for all.”

In fact, each neighborhood will have road access to the parks, via existing thoroughfares or special routes still in the works. Before the end of this year, signs will be displayed everywhere to instruct drivers how to get to the parks.

At the heart of the project are restoration and preservation of landmark sites, as the entire area is filled with substantial remnants of ancient structures and agricultural methods.

“In these areas, we have some of the most ancient remains of the kind of agriculture used in the days of our ancestors. We have found evidence that takes it back to the settlement period, when the tribe of Judah settled in this region upon coming into Eretz Yisrael, and later on from the First Temple period (King Solomon). They installed the first foundations for that particular agriculture on terraces, growing their crops out of the stones of this soil. So it goes without saying that this must be preserved,” explains Avraham Shaked.

He adds that the landscape has managed to survive so well that doesn’t look like an old relic. “It is a lively place. With natural, almost untouched flora, it is a precious thing, but we are already ruining it because of the security barrier built close to it [in the Walaja region close to the park], which in some places creates a terrible gash in this natural weave.”

36

As a result of its green policy, the team appointed Amir Balaban, director of the Jerusalem Bird Observatory, to serve as the ecologist on the project.

“The first goal of the parks is to provide space for leisure and casual sports for the population, that is clear to all of us,” says Balaban. “But our first task is to see that it is done in a way that will not harm the natural environment, and perhaps even enhance it. For example, we could provide the necessary means for the mountain gazelles in these areas to survive and thrive in peace. These animals are in danger of extinction. Israel is the last place in which they still exist. In the countries around us they have totally disappeared, so we have to find sophisticated ways to see that the park development doesn’t harm them, or any other animals. If we decide that we need to pave a road, we have to ensure that the result will not cause the death of more gazelles. You know, a car drives by, a frightened gazelle rushes out and is run over.”

Another thing to consider, he says, is how to minimize the way the park infrastructures will affect the lives of the animals. For example, he says, “ We have decided to prohibit any lighting at night. Electric lights would have a terrible impact on the animals’ lives because they need the natural darkness of night to sleep.”

Another crucial issue is that of paved roads being introduced into the parks. “Wherever we pave an access road,” says Balaban, “we take into account that it will enable people to reach these beautiful places and enjoy them. That is our objective. But on the other hand, a paved road will make it easy for hunters to enter the park and hunt the animals we want to preserve. Not to mention the contractors and builders who might leave their garbage here, which will attract more jackals, which will hunt and eat the young gazelles. So you see, nothing is easy, and every stage in the development requires careful attention. In this regard, the fact that developers and environmentalists are working together in full cooperation gives us hope that it just might work.”

Besides the concern for animal life, the most problematic issue in the project is the large and heavy infrastructures that are being set up in the same area. Water conduits, electricity, sewage, phone cables and more – they all go through the valleys surrounding the city, exactly where the parks are located.

“One of my tasks is to find rare species of plants,” says Balaban.

“If I determine that some plant or tree is a rare specimen in the region, I have the authority to declare that no work will be done near it, and I will give special instructions how far from it the work can be resumed. It is a big responsibility, but there is no other way to preserve nature,” he says.

But there is more that threatens the parks. “ In three of the four park locations, there are still construction projects pending,” says Avraham Shaked, hinting that some of the Safdie Plan projects might be revived by developers at some time in the future.

Shaked fears that though the comprehensive Sadfdie Plan has been canceled, smaller construction projects remain a threat.

37

“Besides the huge problem of the heavy infrastructures. We’re talking about huge pipes – for water supply, for sewage and for communications. They will certainly cause damage to the natural environment there. We have to be on our guard in case these construction projects appear again on the agenda of the planning and construction committees. In fact,” he adds, “I’m afraid we will end up with a patchwork of green areas and ugly infrastructure spots. So despite all the genuine care of the team responsible for the parks project, I would not say that I am feeling at ease.”

While he thinks the parks project could be a blessing for the city and the entire area, Avraham Shaked says, “I only hope we can ensure that there will be more room for green space than for all those attractions that are being planned for tourism and outdoor activities, such as some structures planned for entertainment and festivities that have already been approved in the Arazim Valley park. That is not the kind of thing we need here.

We need more open space, more nature. Believe me, it is for the benefit of us all.”

17. The Mayor's Vision for Jerusalem

Mayor Nir Barkat, Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs, Vol. 10, No. 5, 1/08/2010

http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DRIT=1&DBID=1&LNGID=1 &TMID=111&FID=442&PID=0&IID=4464&TTL=The_Mayor%27s_Vision_for_Je rusalem

* Jerusalem has a population of 800,000 people today, which will grow to a million people twenty years from now. The current population ratio is one-third Muslim, two- thirds Jewish, and two percent Christian. In the next twenty years, we anticipate a need for 50,000 apartments - one-third for the Arab population and two-thirds for the Jewish population.

* The vision I have for the city is to return Jerusalem to the role it played two and three thousand years ago as a world center - a destination for pilgrims and believers throughout the world. I meet people on my travels who say in an apologetic way that they have not yet been to Jerusalem, that it is a place they would like to visit at least once in their lifetime.

* Our vision is to develop Jerusalem so it can fulfill that role - to develop tourism, to be a cultural center, and to exploit the spiritual potential of the Holy City. My goal is to reach ten million tourists a year a decade from now.

* I told the American administration that I hope nobody is actually expecting that a building freeze will happen in Jerusalem or that a freeze should be only for the Jewish

38 population. This would be illegal in Israel and unconstitutional in most democratic countries around the world.

* Jerusalem must stay united. There is not one example in the world of a divided city that ever worked. We have to upgrade the quality of life for all residents, and we must keep Jerusalem undivided.

I Am a Jerusalemite

I am a Jerusalemite who spent fifteen years in the high-tech sector, taking Israeli companies and ideas into the global marketplace. I retired seven years ago, and since then have been working for a shekel a year promoting and developing the city of Jerusalem.

Two thousand years ago there was already over a thousand years of Jewish history in Jerusalem. Two-thirds of the Old Testament happened here. Everywhere you put a shovel in the ground in Jerusalem you will find Jewish roots going back two and three thousand years.

Jerusalem has a population of 800,000 people today, which will grow to a million people twenty years from now. The current population ratio is one-third Muslim, two- thirds Jewish, and two percent Christian. We anticipate that growth will be proportional to the current ratio, and all municipal planning is derived from that assumption.

While Jerusalem is the heart and soul of the Jewish people and the capital of Israel, it is also important for over 3.4 billion Christians and Muslims throughout the world.

A Potential for Ten Million Tourists a Year

The vision I have for the city is to return Jerusalem to the role it played two and three thousand years ago as a world center - a destination for pilgrims and believers throughout the world. I meet people on my travels who say in an apologetic way that they have not yet been to Jerusalem, that it is a place they would like to visit at least once in their lifetime. Our vision is to develop Jerusalem so it can fulfill that role - to develop tourism, to be a cultural center, and to exploit the spiritual potential of the Holy City.

While Jerusalem hosts just over two million tourists a year, my goal is to reach ten million a decade from now. Paris, London, Rome, and New York have over 40 million tourists a year. By increasing the number of tourists that visit the city, we will gain on a number of fronts. First, we will gain ten million ambassadors. People who come to the City of David excavations or the Western Wall tunnels, or who travel to the holy sites, whether they be Christians, Muslims, or Jews, if they come with an open mind, they will understand the power of the city of Jerusalem. Many people have the Bible in their homes, where Jerusalem is mentioned many times.

39 Ten million tourists a year is the equivalent of 140,000 new jobs for the city, and this is relevant for both the Jewish and the Arab populations. It is one of the ways to get Jerusalem out of its poverty. It is an economic incentive that can unite many people around a common vision.

Exploiting the potential of the city is also a good way to fight emigration. We have learned that when people have good jobs, they will stay in the city, enabling stability. There is room for everyone in Jerusalem - Arabs, Jews, ultra-Orthodox, and secular - and we have to develop the city in a way that will enable the different populations to stay and enjoy the power of the city.

Making a WalltoWall Coalition Work

Let me share some of the methodology of how I work in the city of Jerusalem. We have a council of 31 members and in the first month I formed a coalition that included 30 members, which was unprecedented. In a way Jerusalem is a microcosm of what is happening in the country, and I believe that forming relationships between the leadership of the ultra-Orthodox community and the secular, and sitting together on practically every problem that arises, brings solutions to the problems. Not everyone is always happy with the decisions we make, but the methodology of sitting together and focusing on the common denominator works.

The way I manage the municipality is not political but through professional management, where we share thoughts and bring professional solutions in the same way as when I managed in the business world. After a year as mayor, I can tell you that this does work.

Developing a Unique City

Because Jerusalem is a 3,000-year-old city, we have patches upon patches of history about which we have to be very considerate. There are over 3,000 buildings designated for preservation in the city of Jerusalem.

At the moment we do not have the correct ratio between business and residential areas, and there is a large gap in terms of buildings for public needs, such as schools, synagogues, and community centers. In the past, in western Jerusalem, too many building permits were issued to change areas designated for hotels and commerce into residential projects, whereas in eastern Jerusalem, too many neighborhoods were built illegally at a rate with which the municipality and the government could not keep up. When new neighborhoods were built illegally, this created a huge gap in infrastructure, including roads, public buildings, and public land.

The average income of Jews in Jerusalem is about $16,000 a year. In the center of Israel, this figure is approaching $30,000 a year. The average income for Arabs in Jerusalem is about $4,000 a year, but in the West Bank it is less than $1,000 a year. When a young Jewish graduate from Hebrew University sees that the job market is

40 not strong in the city, he migrates out of Jerusalem. However, when the Arabs in the West Bank see that the job market in Jerusalem is so much better than where they live, this encourages Arab migration into Jerusalem.

We are now concentrating on implementing the master plan for Jerusalem which has been developed over the past decade under the administrations of former Mayors Olmert, Lupoliansky, and myself. The master plan has been publicly discussed for five years in the local and district planning committees, and now practically everyone is working according to this plan, although it is not yet official. The plan includes expansion of residential areas in Jerusalem, including the natural expansion of existing neighborhoods. We intend to expand Gilo and Ramat Shlomo and other Jewish neighborhoods, as well as Arab neighborhoods such as Issawiya and A-Tur, in order to take care of the needs of all the different sectors in Jerusalem.

Two of the challenges I face are to come up with clear policies and transparency. I have opened up all of the committee meetings in the municipality to the public, so that today anybody can sit in on every committee, except for the security committee. I have also shared the city's development plans with different administrations - the American, the British, and whoever else is interested.

I told the American administration that I hope nobody is actually expecting that a building freeze will happen in Jerusalem or that a freeze should be only for the Jewish population. This would be illegal in Israel and unconstitutional in most democratic countries around the world. When the municipality approves a building permit, by law we are not allowed to ask if the resident is Jewish, Muslim, or Christian, and I believe that is exactly the status in the United States. In the next twenty years, with an expected population growth of 200,000, we anticipate a need for 50,000 apartments - one-third for the Arab population and two-thirds for the Jewish population. We will do everything we can to make this happen.

Jerusalem must stay united. There is not one example in the world of a divided city that ever worked. We have to upgrade the quality of life for all residents, and we must keep Jerusalem undivided.

For two thousand years, Jerusalem did not enjoy the degree of freedom of religion that it has had since it was reunited 43 years ago. As a matter of fact, when Jerusalem was in Jordanian hands, synagogues and churches were desecrated or destroyed. Today, every religion manages its own sites. It is a strategy and a deeply-held belief within the municipality and the Israeli government that we must enable people to practice their faith in their own way in the city of Jerusalem. The only limited religion in Jerusalem is Judaism, where by law Jews are not allowed to pray on the Temple Mount.

Fixing Forty Years of eglect

There is a misconception that most of the building is on the Jewish side of Jerusalem and most of the demolishing is on the Arab side. The reality is that Jews usually do not build illegally, which is why the price of housing on the Jewish western side of

41 the city is very high. People aren't building illegal houses because they respect the law. Unfortunately, in many cases, the mentality of the Arabs is to first build illegally and then apply, or not apply, for a building license. The reality is that it becomes very difficult to serve the Arab population in such a situation.

This is the result of forty years of neglect, where the planning process was not fully functioning and municipal services were not fully available. The reality is that a lot of buildings were built totally illegally in areas where they should never have been allowed. Today there are about 20,000 illegal buildings in the Arab neighborhoods of eastern Jerusalem.

The challenge is to fix this. We are doing a pilot project in the area of Silwan - a small Arab neighborhood that consists of 659 buildings, only six, or one percent, of which have permits. Silwan is situated on a hill zoned for buildings up to two stories high, and 50 percent of the structures there are over two stories.

We are faced with three options. The first is to continue ignoring the situation and thus further enable illegal building. But the municipality cannot properly serve any neighborhood the size of Silwan that was never planned. Another alternative would be to deal with the 99 percent of the buildings that are illegal, but that doesn't make any sense either. So what we have done is to re-plan the neighborhood and allow up to four stories. We are also busy working on the infrastructure, to improve the roads, the areas for schools, and to add lots of kindergartens and other municipal services. By re- planning the whole neighborhood, we are trying to address the management of this neighborhood in a professional manner for the benefit of the residents.

In Silwan there are 41 Arab-owned buildings and one Jewish-owned building - Beit Yonatan - over four stories high. To demonstrate equality before the law, we must treat all of the buildings over four stories high the same. My recommendation is to shave all of the buildings that are over four stories, and not single out only the Jewish- owned building for government intervention. To go after one building is discriminatory and my recommendation to the government is to deal with all residents exactly the same, whether they be Jewish or non-Jewish.

I would be interested to hear what Mayor Bloomberg would do if somebody built an illegal structure in the middle of Central Park or anywhere else in New York. The Jewish population in Jerusalem is punished if it does not obey the law, and justifiably so. But sometimes I hear the world say that the Jewish population has to obey the law while the Arab population does not.

There are extreme cases in which people building illegally damage the public interest of the population that lives in the area, or damage the municipal interest in encouraging tourism, for example, and in these cases we have to make sure that the law is obeyed. Over the last decade there were 100 demolitions of illegal buildings a year in Jerusalem: 40 were Jewish-owned and 60 were Arab-owned. This is in spite of the fact that there are many thousands of illegal Arab structures and much fewer illegal Jewish structures. The bottom line is to uphold the law, while at the same time providing proper planning for all of these areas. The courts should get involved only in the serious cases that cannot be fixed by re-planning.

42 In addition, when people build houses, the government charges them extra to help pay for the infrastructure to the house and around the neighborhood - sewers and roads and sidewalks. This is standard procedure throughout the world. But what happens when a whole neighborhood is built illegally? Nobody ever collected the money to develop the neighborhood. It is even more challenging because if I want to develop Silwan and I take the money from other municipal funds, the residents of other neighborhoods will go to the Supreme Court and challenge this, saying they already paid their share for infrastructure.

The challenges are a little more complicated than people think, but we are going to make it happen and it starts with proper planning. After the 2009 war in Gaza, the world collected $4 billion to help build the infrastructure of Gaza. I suggest they chip in $1 billion, and we will make sure the money goes directly to investment in the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem to improve their quality of life.

* * *

Nir Barkat, who served as a Jerusalem city councilman since 2003, won election as Jerusalem's mayor in 2008. He was one of the founders of the IVN venture capital network which invests in social initiatives throughout Jerusalem. In 1988 he co- founded the high-tech firm BRM and has served as chairman of numerous companies. This Jerusalem Issue Brief is based on his presentation at the Institute for Contemporary Affairs in Jerusalem on May 20, 2010.

Other current issues

18. Activists created 'fictitious' graves in Mamilla cemetery, say Israeli authorities

The ational (from AP source), 23/08/2010

http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100823/FOREIGN/7082399 88/1011

JERUSALEM // A political battle over a Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem that began with charges of insensitivity levelled at plans for building on the site has spread into a more curious fight about whether hundreds of nearby tombstones are even real.

The Mamilla cemetery had its peace disturbed this month by Israeli bulldozers demolishing gravestones in the middle of the night and by Muslim protests. The once sleepy plot of Muslim gravestones in Jewish west Jerusalem has become a flash point for rival claims to the holy city at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Since early this year, activists from Israel’s Islamic Movement have been cleaning and restoring graves at the cemetery, where tradition says famous Islamic scholars are buried beside warriors who fought the Crusaders alongside Saladin.

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But Israeli authorities say the activists went beyond restoration and manufactured hundreds of graves in a political attempt to cement their hold on the site.

In August, municipal crews arrived at night with power shovels and erased about 300 low, coffin-shaped tomb markers that Israeli officials and archaeologists say were fake and contained no human remains.

The Islamic Movement protested. “The graves are not empty and the graveyard is not fake as they claim,” said Nuha al Qutob, 35, who attended a mid-August demonstration. She said her grandfather was buried nearby.

The cemetery first drew attention in 2004 with the beginning of work on the Museum of Tolerance. Undertaken with the stated goal of promoting coexistence, the museum is a project of the US-based Simon Wiesenthal Centre, a Jewish organisation named for a famous Nazi hunter.

A century ago, the cemetery was a rural plot sprawling outside the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City. Today it is hemmed in by luxury hotels, a high-end shopping mall and a cluster of clubs and bars. Some of the unused cemetery’s land was rezoned by Israel in the 1950s and 1960s, with part becoming a park and one corner a municipal parking lot.

The tolerance museum turned into a public relations debacle when it became clear that the plot of land slated for its construction, the parking lot, contained human remains.

The cemetery has not shrunk since the 1960s and Israel denies that any more land will be rezoned. But Muslim activists fear parts of the plot, which is already a fraction of its original size and includes land with no visible graves, will be severed and consumed.

When the attempts to block the museum in Israeli courts failed in 2008, the Islamic Movement began concentrating its efforts on the rest of the cemetery, outside the security-camera-mounted aluminum walls of the museum construction site.

The movement began bringing in volunteers and contractors to clean up the land and restore the graves with the city’s permission, investing about $100,000 (Dh370,000), according to Mahmoud Abu Atta, a foundation spokesman.

A few months passed, Israeli officials said, before they noticed a dramatic increase in the number of graves. A pathway that city gardeners regularly used with their pickup truck was suddenly blocked by headstones, and a row of gravestones mysteriously appeared over an underground sewage line and on top of one manhole cover, according to Shlomo Chen, an inspector with the Israel Lands Authority in charge of the graveyard.

By August, city crews began arriving at night to demolish the gravestones. Restored graves that the city deemed genuine were left untouched.

44 “It is important to note that this is one of the biggest frauds perpetrated in recent years, and its sole goal was to illegally take over state land,” the Jerusalem municipality said.

The new gravestones, typically constructed with old stones set in fresh concrete, also scrambled the physical record at an important historical site, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority, which termed the graves “fictitious”.

The Islamic Movement’s Abu Atta said all of the markers were constructed atop genuine graves, though in some cases nearly nothing was left of the original. He also indicated that the precise location of the graves was beside the point.

“If you dig a few metres down anywhere here you’ll find bones,” he said. “We just want to guard the cemetery.”

The irony of a Jewish-sponsored Museum of Tolerance going up partly on a Muslim graveyard has made the project an irresistible target for critics. Legal action by the Islamic Movement and other groups snarled the project for years.

The 2008 Supreme Court ruling in the museum’s favour noted that in Israel, where there are more archaeological sites per square mile than in any other country in the world, buildings are often built on graves.

And when the British ruled the city before 1948, it emerged, the local Islamic leaders at the time granted a religious dispensation to move graves in the cemetery to clear the way for a business centre, hotel and park.

19. Formerly religious, newly religious or ultraorthodox?

Yair Assaf-Shapira, Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies , 10/09/2010

http://www.jiis.org/?cmd=datast.0&act=read&id=618

In the social survey conducted by the Central Bureau of Statistics, Jews aged 20+ were asked about their degree of religiosity, and their family’s degree of religiosity when they were 15 years old. The survey offered five options: Non-religious – secular; not-so-religious traditional; religious traditional; religious; and ultra- Orthodox. For the purpose of the analysis, we combined the first two options (non- religious), and the two following options (non-ultra-Orthodox religious). In order to improve the accuracy of the analysis, we combined the data for the years 2007-2009.

A majority of respondents grew up in a family whose degree of religiosity was similar to the respondent’s degree of religiosity today. Of secular Jews (those who defined themselves as secular or non-religious traditional) in Israel, 80% grew up in a secular family; of religious Jews (those who defined themselves as religious or religious traditional), 82% grew up in a religious family; and of ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel, 65% grew up in an ultra-Orthodox family.

45 Note that the percentage among the ultra-Orthodox is lower, and about one quarter (23%) of ultra-Orthodox grew up in a non-ultra-Orthodox religious family, and 11% of them came from a secular family. Among the religious and the secular, there is greater stability, and the percentage of religious who grew up in a secular family (16%) is similar to the percentage of formerly religious (datlashim) – secular Jews who grew up in a religious family (20%).

In Jerusalem, the situation appears to be more dynamic, and a larger proportion of respondents reported that they grew up in a family that differed in its degree of religiosity from their current degree of religiosity. Of secular Jews, 72% grew up in a secular family (versus 80% in Israel, as above); among religious Jews, 78% grew up in a religious family (versus 82% in Israel). Among the ultra-Orthodox, however, the situation appears to be less dynamic than in Israel in general, and 72% of ultra- Orthodox Jews reported that they grew up in an ultra-Orthodox family (versus 65% in Israel). 19% of ultra-Orthodox in Jerusalem grew up in a non-ultra-Orthodox religious family (versus 23% in Israel), and 9% of them grew up in a secular family (versus 11% in Israel).

The percentage of secular Jews who grew up in a religious family (formerly religious) is larger in Jerusalem than in Israel in general, and stands at 27% of secular Jews aged 20+ in Jerusalem, versus 20% in Israel. The proportion of religious Jews who grew up in a secular family (newly religious) is similar in Jerusalem (18% of religious aged 20+) to the proportion in Israel in general (16%).

Some of those who do not declare themselves to be religious observe certain aspects of religion. If, for example, we take the fast on Yom Kippur, it would appear that in Jerusalem, the percentage of people who fast on Yom Kippur (are strict or very strict about doing so) among those who define themselves as non-religious (67%, without people who do not fast for health reasons), is significantly higher than the percentage in Israel (59%).

20. GILO – “JEWISH EIGHBORHOOD” OR ILLEGAL SETTLEMET?

PLO Negotiations Affairs Department , Media Brief: AUGUST 2010

http://www.nad-plo.org/news-updates/Gilo%20Settlement%20Final%20II.pdf

Over the weekend, several media outlets highlighted the Israeli decision to remove an internal barrier within the illegal Israeli settlement of Gilo (sometimes wrongly called a “Jewish neighborhood”) as a change of the status quo of the area. This is inaccurate. The following questions and answers will clarify the situation of the illegal settlement of Gilo:

• What is the status of Gilo and other Israeli settlements under international law?

Gilo and other Israeli settlements built in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) are illegal under international law. This is the view of the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, the International Committee for the Red Cross, and

46 virtually all states except Israel. These “neighborhoods” constitute war crimes under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (1998).Thus, referring to these settlements as “neighborhoods” or “communities” is misleading. A failure to describe these settlements in their accurate political context deprives audiences of the opportunity to understand a principal source of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict: Israel’s illegal confiscation and colonization of Palestinian land. The terms “neighborhood” and “community” conceal the reasons why such settlements are newsworthy: they are built in violation of customary international law on land confiscated from Palestinian villagers who are prevented from accessing, cultivating or living on their ancestral lands.

• When was the settlement of Gilo built?

Gilo is an Israeli settlement situated on Palestinian land occupied by Israel in June 1967. In 1970, Israel confiscated land from the Palestinian villages of Beit Jala, Beit Safafa and Sharafat, and established the settlement of Gilo in 1971. Israel later confiscated additional land from the Palestinian villages of Beit Jala and Beit Safafa in order to expand Gilo. By building the settlement of Gilo, Israel restricted the expansion of the Palestinian towns of Beit Jala, Beit Safafa and Sharafat. Gilo is part of a ring of settlements that severs East Jerusalem from the rest of the occupied West Bank, including Bethlehem, a city that has historically depended on its connection to Jerusalem. Today, Palestinians have control over less than 13% of the Bethlehem district.

• Is the settlement of Gilo a Jerusalem “neighborhood”?

No. In addition to the fact that Gilo is a settlement and not a neighborhood, the area over which it was built has always been part of the Bethlehem District. Many of the quarries and agricultural lands belonging to the village of Beit Jala in the Bethlehem district were located there. To say that Gilo is “part of Jerusalem” is to accept Israel’s unilateral expansion of Jerusalem’s boundaries in its attempt to annex Palestinian land – a move considered illegal by the United Nations, the European Union, the United States as well as the rest of the international community.

• Did Israel dismantle the Wall between the illegal settlement of Gilo and Beit Jala?

No. What Israel is doing is dismantling a barrier located inside the settlement. The wall preventing Palestinians from accessing their lands near Beit Jala remains.

• Has Israel stopped movement restrictions around the settlement of Gilo?

No. In fact, Israel has continued to build the illegal Wall and impose other movement restrictions in areas near Gilo, particularly inside the town of Beit Jala and the village of Wallajeh. An example is the barrier erected in the valley of Bir Onah, an area between Beit Jala and Gilo, which has prevented Palestinian farmers from accessing their land.

• Did Israel cancel its plans to grab more land around the settlement of Gilo?

47 No. The route of the Wall in the area around the settlement of Gilo is expected to further divide Beit Jala from the valley of Cremisan. In this area there is a kindergarten, a football field, a winery, a monastery, a convent and land belonging to 57 Palestinian families from Beit Jala. These families will be prevented from accessing their lands if the Wall is built. Israel has destroyed and uprooted hundreds of trees to build the wall. The wall will extend over 4km and will bring Har Gilo settlement and Cremisan monastery into Gilo Settlement

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