Monday, October 30, Safra Square, 6th floor. It’s 11 a.m. and the senior staff at the mayor’s office head to the meeting room and gather for the first briefing of the day, closed to the media. In the background, police officers and the wails of ambulances can be heard, indicating that something is still happening not far away.
Basically, this is a meeting of the team at the top of the municipality, if you will – the city’s nerve center.
After half an hour the meeting ends, and we start getting ready to go out into the city. Mayor Moshe Lion, accompanied by a small team, which includes a personal spokeswoman, the mayor’s adviser, a security guard, and this journalist – who is the only one as of today who was allowed to accompany this team – leave the mayor’s office to see what is going on.
A trip to the Jerusalem Municipality's Situation Room
The first stop is the municipal Situation Room, located in one of the underground floors. The entrance to it is through a maze that Lion says he already knows by heart.
The Situation Room controls everything that happens in the capital for its approximately one million residents, in the west and east of the city. The department managers and deputy directors sit and report each event in turn, creating an up-to-date situational picture for the mayor and the limited staff next to him. Some participants are not physically present and take part in the meeting via Zoom.
Not surprisingly, the reports begin with the issue of security in the city. On the eastern wall is a huge screen on which one of the channels of Israeli television is being broadcast – at this moment, images from the stabbing incident that took place about twenty minutes earlier at a gas station close to one of the main roads in the capital. The place, in a very symbolic way, housed, until the Six Day War, the only crossing gate between the two parts of the city: This is the Mandelbaum Gate.
Security, education, welfare, culture, treatment of evacuees who moved from the South to the capital, the array of businesses in the city, cleaning, and trash removal even in these difficult days – everything is reported on, and many questions are asked.
The two areas that cause most of the difficulty are the education system from preschool through high school, and welfare services for the local population and the thousands of evacuees staying in Jerusalem.
ONE OF the reassuring things amid all the pressure is the presence of the municipality’s employees, especially those in the sanitation division, most of whom are residents of the east Jerusalem. There are almost no absentees there, and the department works almost as usual.
On the other hand, many municipal employees in the various departments were called to the reserves, and their absence is felt at all levels. In addition, there are many cases where the husbands are recruited and the women employees are required to navigate between work and caring for the children.
“What’s important now is to start getting back to normal as much as possible – and that’s my first and main message,” says Lion. “The municipality and the city of Jerusalem function like a real state. We locate and identify the needs and respond to them – for city residents and the guests who came to us in times of dire need.”
This includes a large series of special assistance packages for businesses in the city, discounts, cancellations of requirements, and assistance in every possible and legal way so that businesses, mainly in the city center, do not close down. At the same time, the city’s Society, Family and Community Division presents an array of cultural and leisure events for residents and evacuees staying in the hotels.
There is the Municipal Inspection Division, Emergency and Security Division, Community and Society Division, Education, Welfare, and the municipal psychological service, which is required to provide an immediate response to the children of evacuated families, in addition to the routine treatment of the city’s children who are dealing with the difficult news and the alarms that are also heard in the capital.
“We come here with a sense of mission for what we have to do here,” says Ariela Rajwan, vice president of community and society, who oversees a large part of the municipal departments involved in preparing for the situation. “We don’t have the privilege to stop now for our private sorrow; we have a city to run.”
During the ongoing reports, the mayor learns that the municipal inspector who neutralized the terrorist who stabbed a policeman only half an hour earlier is Moshe Gabai from Sderot whose daughter was murdered and who decided to move to Jerusalem with the rest of his family. “I congratulated him. Today he is a city inspector in Jerusalem, and this morning he saved someone and eliminated a terrorist,” Lion says with a hint of excitement.
The reports end, the new instructions are delivered to all participants, and the meeting disperses. The Situation Room team meeting is held every day at noon, with the possibility of adding meetings as needed according to the situation.
On the way to exit the Situation Room, we pass in front of the room used by the 106 municipal hotline center, to where most of the requests are directed.
THE NEXT stop is a meeting with evacuees from Sderot who were transferred to the Herbert Samuel Hotel in Zion Square. Lion decides that it is better to give up getting there by car and sets off on foot. On the way, he recounts the sequence of events from that Saturday morning, October 7.
“I went for my morning walk as usual, before I go to the synagogue for Shabbat prayer, and I heard many booms – which is a very, very unusual thing in Jerusalem, especially on Shabbat. I understood that something was happening, but I didn’t imagine the scale of the disaster yet.”
Later, upon his return home, Lion received initial updates. “I realized that it was something serious, so I decided to go to the municipality immediately. I called the first limited team, and we immediately opened a Situation Room. While regular updates started coming in, we began checking what needed to be done here in the city. Area after area – we prepared ourselves for the next day and beyond.”
To the question of whether there was a fear of unrest in the east of the city, Lion answers, “Yes, there was certainly a fear, but thank God, so far, these predictions have been wrong – and I believe that will be the case in the future. The residents of east Jerusalem understand the situation, and they want to live as human beings. Except for young people who don’t listen to anyone, most of the residents of the east of the city do not join this.”
Along the way from Safra Square to Zion Square, Lion receives many greetings and handshakes from residents. “I am so happy to see that there are cafes and restaurants open and people are sitting and trying to get back to normal,” he says.
For Lion, getting back to routine is key. “We must return to normal as soon as possible, which is possible. Obviously it’s not easy or normal, but we can’t afford to destroy our lives and our economy. I tell people it’s good that you leave the house, go to buy something, and sit at a coffee shop in the city. That’s how it should be.”
WAITING AT the Herbert Samuel Hotel for the mayor is the hotel manager. “Until October 6, there were many tourists here who came to celebrate the [month of] Tishrei holidays in Jerusalem. On Saturday, October 7, in the evening, there was no one left here, so we could host families of evacuees from the South without any problem,” he explains.
In every hotel that has evacuees, there is a municipal employee who gathers all the information needed to provide a variety of necessary services. The municipality does not invest in hospitality from its budget – that comes from the government and from the Defense Ministry through the Home Front Command. The scope of municipal services is very large.
In front of the municipality representative is a representative of the families, and together they form a team that handles all requests and needs. “Well-being and health services are provided here through a link to the Health Ministry, as well as all health insurance funds, the supply of medicines, and psychological services for children and adults who have been traumatized in recent days,” explains a coordinator from the municipality, who works closely with the representative of the evacuees.
The excitement and difficulty are still evident on her face, but she emphasizes that there is an improvement with the opening of educational frameworks for young evacuees who have the option of classes in hotels or placement in municipal educational institutions, all at the parents’ request.
When asked how the evacuees react to a well-known fact about Jerusalem – that a large part of the hotel staff are Arabs and residents of the east of the city – the hotel manager says that he has not encountered any problems. Soon, bottles of soda and a tray of cookies arrive and, after another conversation and another testimony, we leave for the next stop: the funeral of a reservist who was a teacher in one of the city’s schools.
Entering the mayor’s car, we make our way through the traffic jams to Mount Herzl. The coffin is lowered, and the grave is covered by friends of the deceased as his mother and wife break down in tears. Just as the bereaved father is invited to eulogize his son, the siren sounds. Everyone is required to prostrate themselves on the ground and protect their heads with their hands.
After one minute, two minutes, almost a minute more pass, we are released. Everyone gets up, shakes off the dirt, and tries to return to the continuation of this other terrible routine of funerals. By this week, already 41 have taken place in Jerusalem. ❖