Washington Post: Jewish Inroads in Muslim Quarter
This Washington Post story about conflict elsewhere in and around the Old CIty adds context to the previous posting about Palestinian concerns over construction adjacent to Mugrabi Gate.
… The Israeli government is funding the first construction of a Jewish settlement in the Old City’s Muslim Quarter since taking control of it nearly four decades ago. The Flowers Gate development plan calls for more than 20 apartments and a domed synagogue that would alter the skyline of the Old City.
Karain’s property is at the center of an accelerating campaign by Jewish settler organizations to change the ethnic and physical character of this city’s oldest Arab neighborhoods. The Israeli government is financing projects that dovetail with the settlers’ goals, which they say are to secure the Old City and an adjacent valley for Israel in any final peace agreement with the Palestinians.
…The Flowers Gate development would expand a nearby enclave where two Jewish families now live in red-roofed bungalows just feet from Karain’s home. The settler organization Ateret Cohanim has begun showing prospective residents the strip of land designated for the synagogue and apartments.
The Post’s photo of the Flowers Gate enclave shows it to be on the other side of this low wall I photographed during an Old City walk in November. The Israeli flag is just visible above the Palestinian shoppers toward the right.
The Post story includes a map showing other Jewish settlements in the Muslim Quarter. This one I saw from the roof of the Austrian Hospice:
More from the Post story:
The settlers’ parcel-by-parcel campaign is unfolding within a single square mile bordered by ancient ramparts and sheer valley walls. ..
…The same settler groups are working now in tandem with the government as they purchase Palestinian property at a time of deep recession in the occupied territories, build new housing and promote the Jewish historical claim to the Old City and Holy Basin. The Israeli government plans to spend $106 million in the area on housing development, tourist centers and historic renovation near contested religious sites through 2013 — money that began flowing last year.
“The conflict is being reduced to its volcanic core,” said Daniel Seidemann, a Jerusalem lawyer and critic of Israel’s land-use policy in the city.
And this:
Ateret Cohanim, an organization named for the crown worn by members of the ancient Jewish priesthood, seeks to rebuild the Temple on the al-Aqsa site and is the primary settler group working within the Old City walls. To move Jews into the Muslim and Christian quarters, the group buys property in ways that have been challenged in court over the years. The 1992 Klugman Commission named it as a prime beneficiary of illegal government help. “Our goal is to reestablish the Jewish presence in all of the Old City,” said Ezra Waner, 26, a student at the Ateret Cohanim Yeshiva, which has existed periodically in the Muslim Quarter for 120 years. “Slowly, slowly, we want to bring the Jews back.”
Here’s Ateret Cohanim. The poster was gone the next day:
The Post again:
…The yeshiva entrance runs through a low, damp tunnel, just down al-Wad Street from the several-story building that Ariel Sharon, then Israel’s infrastructure minister, bought in the 1980s. He purchased the place to create a symbolic Jewish presence in the Muslim Quarter, where Waner said 3,000 Jews lived during the British mandate that preceded Israel’s founding in 1948.
Nothing subtle about Sharon’s building:
I don’t know whether Jews and Arabs will ever live peaceably together in the Old City. I do know that won’t happen if Israel settles Jews inside the walls in the absence of broader efforts to resolve the many difficult issues separating Israelis and Palestinians. Unilateral moves will must make things worse.