Two sides to the narrative

‘In Jerusalem’ takes a tour with right- and left-wing guides; Jewish settlements in E. J'lem will prevent splitting of city.

By PEGGY CIDOR
Daniel Luria 521 (photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
Daniel Luria 521
(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
The two border guards at the checkpoint look surprised – they obviously aren’t used to seeing unexpected guests at their station. While one of them asks for my ID, the second tells me, my guide (a researcher for Ir Amim – an NGO that works toward equal rights for Palestinians living in east Jerusalem) and Wallid, our Arab driver, to stay outside the small compound, yelling at us that it is absolutely forbidden to enter. When they hear that we were not invited by any of the Jewish residents nor are we relatives of any of the Arabs living behind the barrier, we are politely but firmly asked to leave.
The place in question is the highly guarded entrance to Kidmat Zion, one of the “hot” projects on the city council’s agenda. In addition to the two structures already inhabited by six families, there is a plan to build new housing and enlarge the project, promoted by the right-wing Ateret Cohanim organization and supported by Mayor Nir Barkat. Kidmat Zion overlooks the Temple Mount, with a breathtaking – and unusual – view from the east.
We follow the guards’ orders and begin to leave, knowing that there is a guided visit of Kidmat Zion scheduled for the next day. But at that exact moment, Ateret Cohanim spokesman Daniel Luria, my guide for the next day, emerges from behind the barrier and greets me. And so there we were, on a narrow path near the security barrier, overlooking the Palestinian village of Abu Dis: two Jews, from organizations that represent opposite ends of the political spectrum, a journalist, two Druse border guards and an Arab, all interested in this tiny place, albeit for very different reasons.
THE RESPECTIVE positions of the right-wing organizations that encourage Jewish residents to move to east Jerusalem and those of the left-wing groups trying to prevent it are essentially two different narratives of the same situation. Rightwing organizations and their representatives say loud and clear that their purpose is to increase a sustainable Jewish population in all parts of the city, mostly in east Jerusalem and near the Holy Basin, while left-wing activists present these actions as the most alarming threats to any viable solution to the Middle East conflict. Nothing is under cover, (almost) nothing is kept secret – on the contrary, representatives of the right-wing associations consider it in their best interests to inform as many people as possible about their activities. Not surprisingly, while those on the Right of the political spectrum display their achievements with pride and satisfaction, the activists on the Left sound more and more concerned.
Organizations on both sides have quite a lot of information about those on the other – down to the nuances of which specializes in what neighborhoods and what methods they use. While from time to time there is mention in the news about a new location in which Jewish inhabitants establish residence (usually following the eviction of a Palestinian family) – the most recent being the two young families that took possession of two buildings in the northern Beit Hanina neighborhood – according to both sides, the situation is much more complex. The figures are more or less agreed on both sides – about 3,000 Jewish residents in 48 locations.
A quick glance at the map of the Jewish installations in Jerusalem gives an immediate and clear answer to the concern of the leftwing organizations; Scattered all over the city, within the Old City walls and in some of Jerusalem’s most remote points, clearly the present situation will make a plan to divide the city into two capitals within the framework of two states for two peoples an almost impossible task. Whether one sees this situation as a nightmare or a dream come true, there is almost no argument between the two sides that the Jewish installation project has been successful enough to prevent a future division of the capital. But while the representatives of the Right see in this an important tool to secure Israeli sovereignty not only in these places but in the entire city, including the post-1967 neighborhoods, on the Left there is a consensus that this is exactly what is putting at risk the world’s silent recognition of Israel’s right to remain in places like Gilo, East Talpiot, French Hill and Ramot.
Ir Amim’s story
Eran Tzidkyahu, my guide from Ir Amim, meets me at the parking lot of the Liberty Bell Garden, from which we drive toward Talpiot. We pass by the twostory building on Hamefaked Street (on what was the Arab side of Abu Tor until 1967), which is inhabited by about 20 Jews, some students, some families. Tzidkyahu chooses to start the tour at Nof Zion, located on the lower slopes of Jebl Mukaber (below the UN headquarters and the Talpiot promenade). Before we reach the project, we take a look from one of the panoramic spots on the promenade, where Tzidkyahu draws my attention to what Ir Amim considers the first damage caused by the Jewish communities in east Jerusalem: the lack of new construction in the east compared to the west, indicating more than any figures, he emphasizes, the terrible lack of a housing solution for the Arab residents.
After a while, we reach the luxury buildings of Nof Zion – the only Jewish project in an Arab neighborhood that is a completely private enterprise. “This project wasn’t succeeding. People hesitated to spend their money here,” says Tzidkyahu. “If it weren’t for the millions that Irving Moskowitz, the patron of the settlers, was ready to invest here, it would have been a total loss.”
But what really incenses my guide is the lack of infrastructure in the neighborhood, except for a narrow strip near the Jewish buildings. No sidewalks (young children coming back from school have to walk on the street) no playground (except for one inside the Nof Zion compound), garbage spilled on the sides of the streets and, needless to say, no bus and no bus stops. Inside and around Nof Zion, there is no lack of elegant sidewalks, trees, lighting and the cleanliness is in complete contrast to the neglect in surrounding areas.
From Nof Zion, which currently has 90 housing units – most of them already inhabited – and second- and third-stage plans ready for implementation (280 and 66 housing units, respectively), we move to A-Tur on the Mount of Olives. Here there are two inhabited projects. About 20 people live in the three units of Beit Hoshen. A few meters to the left, on the main road that goes down toward Wadi Joz, lies one of the oldest projects – Beit Orot, with 14 families and about 80 yeshiva students, which is undergoing a new phase of construction.
We continue on to Ras el-Amud, also known as Ma’aleh Zeitim, the largest and so far most successful Jewish project in Jerusalem’s Arab neighborhoods. More than 250 people live in the first phase of the project, which overlooks the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, and the next stage – 60 housing units – is already under construction. Besides synagogues, a mikve and kindergartens, a country club, a swimming pool and a library are also planned.
When we get out of the car to get a closer look at the buildings, a group of children coming out of school on an unpaved path beneath the Jewish houses seems surprised at first. After a while, one of them throws a stone vaguely in our direction. My guide suggests we get back in the car, so I take one more look at the former police station facing the Jewish buildings – a project is being planned to transform this into an additional Jewish community, Ma’aleh David, that will include 104 housing units. (The police station has moved to the E1 zone near Ma’aleh Adumim, a move that drew criticism from the American administration.) Tzidkyahu draws my attention to two older houses on the opposite side of the road, within the cemetery compound.
He say that about 15 Jews live inside. Below the large police station building, there is a gas station. He says that though he does not have sufficient information yet, the structure is already in Jewish hands and will probably become a Jewish residence soon too.
FROM MA’ALEH Zeitim we drive to Kidmat Zion – where we were not allowed in – and on the way we see the Silwan neighborhood. Down in the valley stands the seven-story building named Beit Yehonatan, and a little below it I recognize Beit Hadvash. Despite repeated High Court rulings ordering the city to evacuate it, the house is still inhabited and there are quiet preparations to evict eight Palestinian families who live in a nearby structure that was a synagogue before 1948 and has already obtained the court’s ruling to be returned to Jewish hands. From here, through Sheikh Jarrah, we drive to Beit Hanina, where less than two weeks ago a new Jewish community was founded. On the way to Beit Hanina, we pass not far from the Shimon Hatzadik (Sheikh Jarrah) neighborhood, where eight families and about 20 yeshiva students have been living for several years. The Jewish families stepped in after the Palestinians families that had lived there since 1948 were evicted following a court ruling that recognized the houses in the complex as Jewish properties. Up above the hill, overlooking the Shimon Hatzadik compound, stands the Shepherd Hotel, which was bought by Moskowitz and is planned to become another Jewish project with 90 housing units, a kindergarten and a synagogue. The project was approved in 2009 by the local construction committee. The next day, Luria from Ateret Cohanim will emphasize the justice served by acquiring the hotel in which the notorious Jerusalem grand mufti Haj Amin el-Husseini, met with Nazis officials.
UPON ARRIVING in Beit Hanina, a well-to-do neighborhood (at least compared to Ras el-Amud ), we fail at first to find the two houses into which two young Jewish families moved recently. Wallid, the driver, asks the local children if they know in which houses the “Yahud” live. No one hesitates – it seems that news spreads quickly here – and they show us the way immediately. We stop in the yard and ask permission to enter the residence of Shira, a 20- something mother of three, and her husband, Daniel. Shira is sitting in the large room that served until two weeks ago as the living room of a Palestinian family. Her newborn baby girl is beside her and Daniel is busy renovating the house. They moved here from Kiryat Arba.
“It is a privilege to come to live in Jerusalem,” says Daniel with a broad smile, refusing to say more because he doesn’t know about “these things,” and asking us to speak with the person responsible, Aryeh King. King, the director of the Israel Land Fund, is not here at the moment, so we look around the house.
Before we leave, Tzidkyahu remarks that there are still some stickers in Arabic on the doors.
Tzidkyahu, a licensed tour guide with a master’s degree in Middle East studies, is fluent in Arabic and emphasizes that he speaks from a strongly Zionist point of view. “These Jewish installations are a really serious obstacle toward any chance to achieve a peace agreement,” he says, adding that despite the court rulings scrupulously obtained by right-wing associations, nothing can wipe away the ugly spectacle of Palestinian families being evicted from what have been their homes for decades, in front of the world’s cameras. “It not only prevents any chance for a solution to the conflict, but even if we admit that from a right-wing perspective this is one united city, how come only the Jews can build and live where they want? Arab residents cannot build, do not enjoy any quality of life provided by the municipality. Wherever Jews build, infrastructure stops at their door.”
Asked why Jews cannot live wherever they want while a growing number of Arab residents are moving to the predominantly Jewish neighborhoods of French Hill and Pisgat Ze’ev, Yehudit Oppenheimer, director of Ir Amim, says that this is a hypocritical claim.
“The settlers say they just want to get back Jewish properties, but what about the Arab-owned properties on the western side that are now inhabited by Jews? and why does it always have to involve the eviction of Palestinian families ? But the point is that they [Jewish residents in Arab neighborhoods] say that Arabs moving inside Jewish neighborhoods change the character of the area – but what about Jews moving into predominantly Arab neighborhoods? Doesn’t that change the character too? Let’s not be naïve – this is an attempt to impose the Jewish-Israeli narrative over the city, on Arab residents, on top of ruining any efforts to reach a peace agreement, which we all know that should include a division of the city into two capitals. These settlements in east Jerusalem prevent it and thus prevent our chances to attain peace one day.”
About Ir Amim
Ir Amim (City of Nations) was founded in 2000 and aims to make Jerusalem a more viable and egalitarian city for the Arabs who live here, with a special focus on safeguarding holy sites. Ir Amim strives to find solutions to achieve a sustainable political future for Jerusalem, which, in the view of its founders, can be achieved only through a negotiated process between Israel and the Palestinians.
The organization monitors legal advocacy and brings to the public’s and media’s attention any key developments that, in their view, might impede equality, undermine Jerusalem’s stability or threaten negotiations (like the settlements, or Arab land expropriations). Notably Ir Amim applies the term “settlement” in Jerusalem mainly to Jewish construction in the middle of Arab areas that is not a direct and open government initiative – namely in the Old City and the adjacent neighborhoods.
It does not use the term settlement to describe Jewish Jerusalem neighborhoods over the Green Line.
Ateret Cohanim’s story
Twenty-four hours later, another guide shows me the achievements of the right-wing organizations in the Holy City. Daniel Luria is a high-ranking activist at Ateret Cohanim and its spokesman for the foreign press. Luria also starts his tour in the Talpiot region, at the Hamefaked Street project in Abu Tor. We climb to the third floor, and from the large terrace, the view on a clear spring day is breathtaking. As I receive clear instructions as to what I am allowed to mention regarding security, I ask about its cost to the taxpayers – NIS 74 million a year (in Jerusalem alone). Luria says that if it was up to him, there wouldn’t be any kind of security system “because it sends a message of fear and weakness.”
Luria wants to clarify something before he begins the tour. He says that Ateret Cohanim doesn’t own any property and only establishes the ties between available housing and prospective residents: Donors buy the properties and the dwellers pay them rent. Luria insists that in most cases it is an initiative of the Arab residents who approach the organization to sell them property, which, he adds, in most cases were originally Jewish properties that were inhabited by Arab residents after 1948.
“This is mostly the situation in renewing the old Jewish Quarter [the name given by Ateret Cohanim to the present Muslim Quarter], where there are hundreds of Jewish properties.” Luria adds that in 1967, after the Six Day War, government representatives didn’t ask Arab tenants to leave Jewish-owned properties, but requested them to pay key money and rent, thus turning them into protected tenants with all the associated rights and obligations according to the law. He adds that the Ateret Cohanim policy is not to go to court – except in the case of Sheikh Jarrah. “What we do is very simple,” he explains. “Muhammad sells, Yankel buys. That’s all.”
Asked how he can ensure that sellers are not harmed due to the Palestinian law that requires the death penalty for any Arab who sells property to a Jews, Luria points out that except for one case that happened years ago, so far none of the Arabs who have approached Ateret Cohanim have been harmed.
Regarding the political outcome of his organization’s activity, Luria remarks bitterly that so far about 3,000 Arab residents have moved into predominantly Jewish neighborhoods like French Hill, Ramat Eshkol and Pisgat Ze’ev, and “nobody in the world says a word, but a Jew? Who’d buy a house in a city in which we are sovereign? It makes my blood boil a little to hear a Black president, when the Shepherd Hotel incident is raised, say that Jews have no right to move into a building. That is a symbol of Nazism. Could you imagine today in America if there were neighborhoods that say we don’t allow Blacks or Jews inside? Jews and Arabs have to be able to live together but under Jewish sovereignty.”
Six families live in the Hamefaked Street compound, Luria confirms, explaining that there has never been a move to purchase or install Jewish families as “retaliation” for any political move of the government. “Jews want to live here, in Jerusalem, near the Temple Mount, in the Old City. Jews want to be close to God’s presence.”
Luria points to Silwan, which he calls “Kfar Hateimanim, Beit Yehonatan and Beit Hadvash,” and – intentionally or not – mentions that quite a few additional places have already been acquired but he doesn’t reveal their exact locations. Asked for more precise information, he answers that there are two things he doesn’t discuss: Ateret Cohanim’s budget and the activities that are taking place.
We drive through the road that surrounds the Mount of Olives, passing Ma’aleh Hazeitim on our right, and continue east to the road that runs next to the security barrier, under the old road to Jericho, and finally reach the entrance to Kidmat Zion.
This time the border guards kindly allow us to enter, and we meet Avishag, the mother of one-year-old triplets, who moved here eight years ago and says that it is a dream come true, pointing at the golden dome on Temple Mount, which is unbelievably close to her courtyard. Luria emphasizes that there is plenty of land here to enlarge the project, and adds that this could be the perfect solution in place of the now-defunct Safdie plan for the development of west Jerusalem. Here, again, the land is re-bought Jewish property, but Luria mentions that 70 percent of the Jewishowned land in this area is on the other side of the security barrier, under Palestinian control.
Avishag keeps an eye on her children, who play in the paved courtyard, careful not to let them go down the stairs. She and her husband moved to Kidmat Zion from Kiryat Moshe “because we weren’t looking for an easy life without some deeper meaning; we wanted to fulfill something important in our life, though it is not easy – it is small, far away from all the facilities of the city center.”
Their only serious problem, adds Avishag, is to make sure that there is a minyan every Shabbat, but she says that with the presence of the yeshiva students who live in one of the nearby buildings, it usually works out fine. She explains that this is Jewish land and adds that “if we weren’t ready to come here, others [meaning Arabs] would have taken over, so we are here on a mission.”
The couple, in their early 30s, approached Ateret Cohanim on their own initiative and asked to move into one of the projects in east Jerusalem. The rent is lower than in the city, but Avishag says that on the other hand they have a lot of expenses. Luria says that the project is expected to be be fully approved soon, and the neighborhood will then grow to 260 housing units.
From Kidmat Zion, we drive through east Jerusalem and end up across from Herod’s Gate, in front of east Jerusalem’s central post office. From here, Luria and I walk to the Muslim Quarter and visit some of the some 30 houses, complexes, synagogues and yeshivot located on former Jewish properties in the Muslim Quarter – or the former Jewish Quarter. All the houses are equipped with sophisticated security devices, including cameras connected to a central control room, which is also connected to Luria’s smartphone, and he has the keys to all of them. Most of the homes house more than one family and share the same courtyard. In one of the houses, work is still being done, and an Arab family still lives in the second story. Luria says that relations are polite and even friendly; the family is not at home at that moment.
From here we move to the Photographer’s House, a four-story house with a large open roof overlooking the Temple Mount and the Dome of the Rock from the south this time, and again unbelievably close.
Then on to other homes, inhabited by two or more Jewish families, with or without a courtyard, surrounded by security cameras and systems, or synagogues and yeshivot.
Luria says that for the moment there is no shortage of Arabs who want to sell, Jews who want to live here and Jews ready to finance, and adds that the situation is the same on the other side: “Arabs also know that if they are going to have any chance of getting some part of Jerusalem, they need to add facts on the ground in the Old City, and there is no shortage of funds on the Arab side with a specific agenda strengthening the Arab roots in the heart of Jerusalem, to divide the city. It’s the war over the control over Jerusalem.”
About Ateret Hacohanim
The basis of this organization is a religious Zionist yeshiva located in the Muslim Quarter (since 1978). Having brought an estimated 3,000 Jews to move into houses that it bought from Arab residents over the years, Ateret Cohanim reportedly facilitated the purchase more than 70 buildings in Arab neighborhoods, worth an estimated $10 million. The property includes the yeshiva, the building that houses Yeshiva Shuvu Banim, several dormitories, a museum and about 50 apartment units. Some of the property once belonged to Jews who lived in the Muslim Quarter before they were driven out by pogroms in 1929 and 1936. Ateret Cohanim officials estimate that the cost of purchasing the rest of the buildings in the Muslim Quarter is $100 million, with another $100 million for renovations. The organization is headed by Mati Dan.