This week in Jerusalem: Lifta faces facelift

The Lifta Plan, a controversial construction initiative of the Israeli Land Authority first submitted to planning institutions about eight years ago, has unexpectedly reappeared on the desk of the local planning and construction committee. The project includes the building of 243 luxury housing units and a boutique hotel. 

About two years ago, following action by Jerusalem residents, environmental activists, archaeologists and architects who raised hundreds of objections, the plan was dropped. Suddenly it has reappeared on the schedule of decision-makers at the ILA – without informing the decision-makers at Safra Square. 

Lifta is a historic location with an ancient heritage, and sadly, “Lifta Plan No. 6036” was made without regard to its historical importance. Lifta has been for some four years now on the tentative list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites, intended to preserve sites of outstanding universal quality expressing the cultural, social, historical, archaeological and natural richness of the country. Sources say the chances Lifta will be included on the prestigious heritage list are high. 

Nevertheless, due to real estate sharks backed by officials at the ILA for unclear reasons, this unique site is in danger of being misused for a luxury project that officials at Safra Square have more than once said is an unnecessary housing project which will simply add more ghost apartments instead of consolidating the city.

In 2017, then-finance minister Moshe Kahlon decided to designate the site as a nature reserve to protect it from eventual new construction plans. However, it turned out – for unclear reasons – that the decree did not include the part of the village built but abandoned by its former residents. This apparent lacuna in the decree has enabled the investors to try to promote a new project there. 

Now it is a race against the clock – who will manage to stop this initiative, and at what price. The project to build hundreds of luxury homes is a very attractive one for promoters; they are unlikely to renounce it easily. The final decision is in the hands of Mayor Moshe Lion. 

The school summer vacation has hardly started, but as in the years before the coronavirus era, vandalism has already reared its ugly head. Whether it is the act of bored teenagers out of the scholastic framework or young Arab residents taking advantage of the free time during vacation, the results are troublesome.

Nine buses parking near the Cinema City were damaged, their windows smashed. Last Friday night, two youngsters were mildly injured in two different brawls between groups of young adults in the city center. In a third case, two youths were caught by city-center cameras in the act of smashing light poles at the entrance to the recently reopened Hotel Ibis near Zion Square. 

A source at the department for at-risk youth at the municipality says these are generally not the actions of normative youths now on vacation, but that of at-risk youth who live in the streets, mostly around Zion Square, and sometimes manage to enlist bored young boys during summer vacation. The source added that due to the coronavirus year and lack of budgets, not all these at-risk youth are being tracked by instructors.

Manhi (the municipal education administration) – backed by Deputy Mayor Hagit Moshe, who holds the Education portfolio – has decided there will not be mandatory vaccination for the next school year. However, the administration will encourage parents to vaccinate children at the ages advised by the Health Ministry. The change in their position regarding youth vaccination came as a result of the growing number of Israelis, including those already vaccinated, who re-caught the virus. Source at Manhi explained that the decision to encourage parents to vaccinate their children is aimed at reducing risk for another school year under the threat of the pandemic. 

Even as Jewish associations work toward bringing as many Jews as possible into the Old City, on the basis of the Israeli law allowing them to reclaim pre-1948 Jewish properties, various NGOs have been trying to help Arab residents obtain the right to stay on the land. The efforts have attracted great local and international attention. The High Court of Justice is set to hold a hearing on August 2 regarding the pending eviction of four Palestinian families from Sheikh Jarrah, near the Old City.

Meanwhile, a number of attempts by some of the Jewish associations to simply repurchase properties in the Old City area have brought the threat of the death penalty from the Palestinian Authority against any Palestinian caught selling property to Jews. With this backdrop, a specific case has brought fear to Arab residents who, despite the threats, continue to conduct such real estate transactions. The case in question involves Silwan, a neighborhood on the outskirts of the Old City, where one local real estate agent was exposed by PA operatives – with photos of the man and his wife were published in social media. 

A source inside one of the Jewish associations says the phenomenon of such threats and operatives working to uncover Arabs selling property to Jews is not new, and that in most of the cases, the real estate agents are provided with money and the means to escape the wrath of the PA, including by sending them abroad. In this particular case, the house sold to the Jewish association has already been vacated and a Jewish family has been set up there.

The shameful custom popular within the haredi sector to hide or even deface women’s faces continues, this time in publications regarding this week’s elections in several community councils. It happened in the Neveh Ya’acov and Har Nof neighborhoods, where brochures and other publications presenting the women running for positions on the council board have been replaced – with flowers in Har Nof; or simply erased in Neveh Ya’acov.

This is not the first time that photos of women connected to local elections have been vandalized or kept from appearing. In the 2013 campaign, former deputy mayor and MK Rachel Azaria sued Egged, demanding that her poster appear on the company’s buses. According to the municipality’s legal adviser, the women running in the current elections in these two haredi neighborhoods had requested their face not appear in the publications. It’s not clear how women who do not want to show their face during a campaign will manage to carry out their public service if and when elected. 

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions” might become a local saying, as far as the municipality is concerned. At issue is the will to bring back city nightlife after the pandemic and to encourage cafés and bars to use open spaces on sidewalks and parts of streets.

So far – however good the intention – time and time again it has gone awry. Someone at Safra Square forgets to first inform the residents about the planned changes; not to mention the fact that the law requires the residents’ approval before any significant alteration to sidewalks and streets can be made.

The same situation occurred recently in Nahlaot and Mahaneh Yehuda, with the decision to allow bars to use sidewalks and operate far beyond midnight. In that case, area residents close fought back, arguing that not only would they lose many parking spaces, but their life – especially their evenings – would become nightmarish.

The same is now happening for residents of Shoshan Street, very close to Safra Square, where a few bars are trying to make up for the economic damage sustained during corona. The residents have organized a committee to represent them at the municipality, arguing that this decision will deprive them of the few existing parking spaces they have, which already are far from sufficient. For now, the municipal decision has remained unchanged, but residents are adamant that they will not cave in.