NO ONE has lived in the Prime Minister’s Residence since July 2021, when Benjamin Netanyahu and his family moved out. Renovations that were started were discontinued, and there seems little likelihood that they will be resumed. Meanwhile, whatever is visible behind one of the entrances betrays signs of neglect.
The adjacent building, known as The Schocken House, has in its time been used as a music academy, a school for new immigrants from the former Soviet Union, a polling station for municipal elections, and most recently as an R&R facility for the prime minister’s bodyguards. However, it has not been in use for quite some time and is now overgrown with weeds and is a very ugly sight.
The government is strapped for funds. The sale of the official residence of the prime minister would fetch a pretty penny. Before it was the Prime Minister’s Residence, it was the abode of a string of foreign ministers.
The first prime minister to occupy the premises was Yitzhak Rabin during his first stint as prime minister. His wife refused to live in the original Prime Minister’s Residence, a five minutes’ walk away, because it was old-fashioned and needed too many repairs.
The last prime minister to live in the former residence was Golda Meir, who as foreign minister had also occupied the residence on the corner of Smolenskin and Balfour streets.
Among the other residents over the years have been Moshe Sharett, Abba Eban, Menachem Begin, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Shamir, Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, and Ehud Olmert.
The property is doubly valuable because of the people who set foot there.
The Government Press Office has a comprehensive photographic archive of all the prime ministers and foreign ministers who lived there, as well as the foreign dignitaries they entertained, and could supply some of these photographs to whoever would purchase the property.
There are still wealthy snob-value buyers in the world. The buyer who ends up with the house and renovates it can include a photo gallery of the people who lived there, plus some relevant information about them to have as a talking point when entertaining his or her own guests.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich should give some serious thought to this and the possible sale of other state-owned properties that are not being used or are not really needed.
Moshe Lion: Rebuilder of Jerusalem, shunner of taxpayers
■ IT WOULD seem Mayor Moshe Lion wants to go down in history as the man responsible for rebuilding Jerusalem. Every few weeks there is a new bubble of discontent brewing in a once quiet neighborhood in which the district planning committee has given the green light to developers to build multi-unit towers, which completely change the character of the neighborhood. Decisions are made without consulting the residents, who more often than not do not want towers blocking their views or a light rail system running through their main streets.
But Lion continues to run roughshod over the taxpayers, ignoring their wishes. As yet, no neighborhood has gone on strike, with all the residents refusing to pay rates and taxes while what they want is not taken into consideration.
Without any offense intended to Orthodox Jerusalemites, if and when the Messiah comes, tradition states that there will be a rising of the dead. If indeed that happens, they will not be able to find their way home because the homes they left, in most cases no longer exist, and streets have also changed.
Adding to already published disputes about changing the face of a street or a whole neighborhood, the municipality has put up placards informing the public of major changes about to take place at the Agron-King George intersection and along both those streets, with more hotels and residential complexes. Admittedly, all the new projects will have underground car parks, but when there is a residential property with 100 units in which almost every family owns at least two cars, what will happen when half the residents want to go shopping or to work? They can’t be forced to use public transportation.
That’s another annoying issue. Changes are made more frequently than ever before in the public transportation system. It’s confusing for locals, and more so for tourists who visit annually or even more often, because it doesn’t occur to them that the bus they always took has changed its route, and in some cases has been discontinued.
Some future historian, looking back at this period in the annals of Jerusalem, will label the changes an abuse of power.
Jerusalem's deputy mayor gets ready for new role
■ IN SEPTEMBER, when it was thought that municipal elections would be held at the end of October, Deputy Mayor Fleur Hassan-Nahoum was appointed by the Foreign Ministry as special envoy for innovation. But due to the war between Israel and Hamas, the elections were postponed, and Hassan-Nahoum is still serving as deputy mayor.
However, her visit to Texas this week to address the Texas Business Association was excellent preparation for her new role – not that she really needed it. Among her other accomplishments, she is a communications expert and an excellent orator in English, Spanish, and Hebrew, aside from which, as the co-founder of the UAE-Israel Business Council, she has already proven her mettle, which may be what prompted the ministry to appoint her as innovation envoy.
She has done sterling work in the municipality and would make an excellent mayor, but the chances of a female being elected mayor in Jerusalem are almost nil. Still, Aliza Bloch was elected mayor of Beit Shemesh, so if Hassan-Nahoum decides to run in five years’ time, she could conceivably win. A lot can happen in a five-year period.
A struggling Israeli woman gets free dental work
■ GILO RESIDENT Leah Harush, the mother of 11, was undergoing expensive dental treatment with the financial help of her son Netanel, an accountant, who was called up for reserve duty in Gaza. St.-Sgt.-Maj. Netanel Harush fell in battle, and, according to Yediot Yerushalayim, her dentist, Dr. Mahmoud Massalha, decided in a sympathy gesture to complete the dental work free of charge.
After the death of her son, Leah, who earns a meager income from doing housework, told the dentist she would pay him piecemeal but asked whether he could complete the dental work in time for the memorial anniversary ceremony in honor of her son.
But Massalha, a resident of Beit Hanina with a dental lounge in the German Colony, refused to accept payment. He saw that she had lost a lot of weight in her grief and that she cried most of the time. He could not bring himself to take any money from her.
He has four other patients whose sons fell in battle, and he feels a strong bond with all of them.
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