Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat on the planned tourist cable-car

Jerusalem Mayor: Cable Car Stop in Palestinian Neighborhood Will Clarify 'Who Really Owns This City'

Haaretz, August 25, 2016
Nir Hasson

link to article: http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.738541

'Our ties to Jerusalem can never be unraveled,' Nir Barkat says in video about his plan to provide easy access to tourists sites by cable car, noting that the cable car will serve not just economic and tourism needs, but also ideological goals.

Jerusalem’s planned cable car will include a stop in the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan, so that riders will “understand who really owns this city,” Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat told Likud party activists recently.

According to the municipality’s published plans, the cable car will have four main stops: the First Station complex in southern Jerusalem; the Kedem Center, which belongs to the right-wing organization Elad, near Silwan; the 7 Arches Hotel on the Mount of Olives; and the churches of Gethsemane, near the Old City’s Lions Gate.

But Barkat mentioned a fifth stop – the Siloam Pool, deep in the heart of Silwan and some 500 meters from the Kedem Center – in a video clip published on his Facebook page last week. In the video, the mayor addresses a group of Likud activists he is conducting on a tour of Jerusalem.

Both stops, the Siloam Pool and the Kedem Center, would be inside the City of David national park, which is run by Elad. Barkat said the Kedem stop will be the most important, as cars will depart from there in three directions – to Gethsemane, the Mount of Olives and Siloam.

He also said that the cable car will serve not just economic and tourism needs, but also ideological goals.

After describing the archaeological effort needed to expose the steps leading from Siloam to the Temple Mount and his plan to repair the pool, he added, “I want to enable Jews and non-Jews to recreate this experience. Anyone who wants to immerse [in Siloam] and then go up toward the Temple Mount experience, anyone who does this will know exactly who the owner of this city is.
“When they have this experience, even leftists get totally confused, because they understand that this is real, and our ties to Jerusalem can never be unraveled. For this experience, it’s also necessary to create a means of transportation.”

Barkat said he wants “to bring 10 million tourists who will all get to these places. Without the infrastructure of trains, cable cars and so forth, we won’t be able to experience this unique experience. To bring the wider world, to understand who really owns this city – all this infrastructure is intended for that.”

Panoramic view of the plaza of the Dome of the Rock

Click on the photo to go to Facebook and see the panorama. This is from the Palestinian photographer Fadi Amirah, who takes beautiful photos of Jerusalem and other parts of Palestine.

Tensions as Jews Visit a Jerusalem Holy Site

Report on tensions on the Temple Mount, between Jews visiting it because the Temple was built there and Muslims who believe that those Jews are threatening their status on the Haram al-Sharif. The reporter is Linda Gradstein, for the Media Line.


 

Holy Fire in Jerusalem, April 11, 2015

Today is the ceremony of the Holy Fire in Jerusalem (Holy Saturday in the calendar of the Orthodox churches). See http://mystical-politics.blogspot.co.il/2015/04/holy-fire-in-jerusalem-april-11-2015.html for a link to some photos.

An Israeli journalist in Tsur Baher

Israelis, including Israelis who live in west Jerusalem, rarely venture into the neighborhoods of east Jerusalem. Eliezer Yaari has just written a book on Yaari's encounters with the Palestinians who live in Tsur Baher, an area of the city that was annexed to Israel after the 1967 war. This story is from Ha'aretz, April 10, 2015

A link to Yaari's website about the book can be found here: The Book (English). In Hebrew: The Book (Hebrew).

Doctor's orders led this journalist to discover his Palestinian neighbors

After heart surgery, doctors told journalist Eliezer Yaari he needed to walk. His feet led him to a nearby Palestinian village – a microcosm of political developments in Jerusalem – and a new book with some frank observations.

Eliezer Yaari, on the backdrop of Tsur Baher. Photo by Emil Salman

By Nir Hasson | Apr. 10, 2015 | 4:10 AM

Source: http://www.haaretz.com/news/features/.premium-1.651049

The hill that divides the cemetery of Kibbutz Ramat Rachel from the Palestinian village of Tsur Baher is visible from the home of journalist Eliezer Yaari, in Jerusalem’s Arnona neighborhood. It’s a broad, open expanse that until 1967 was the site of a large Jordanian army base and until 15 years ago still contained a minefield, the last remaining one in the vicinity. These days it’s an olive grove, in the heart of which is an impressive – and disturbing – sculpture entitled “Olive Columns” (by Ran Morin, 1991): three olive trees planted atop huge 15-meter-high columns.

'Olive Columns' by Ran Morin (1991). 

Impressive and disturbing. Photo by Emil Salman

The national watershed runs across the hill, as does the unofficial boundary between East and West Jerusalem – on the right, if you’re facing north, Arnona and Ramat Rachel; on the left, Tsur Baher and Umm Touba. Almost 50 years have passed since Israel conquered and annexed East Jerusalem, and it’s been 15 years since the mines were cleared, but the border remains clear and sharp. Few Israelis cross it.

In the past two years, however, Yaari crossed and recrossed the (in)visible boundary time and again. He struck up conversations with residents of Tsur Baher and photographed them. The result is a book, “Beyond the Mountains of Darkness,” probably the first book written in our time by an Israeli Jew about a Palestinian neighborhood in Jerusalem. (It will be available in English as an eBook later this month; in the meantime, a teaser can be seen at http://eliezeryaari.com/the-book)

“Beyond the Mountains” ends with the wave of the violence that rocked Jerusalem last summer, following the kidnapping and murder of three yeshiva students and the subsequent murder of a Palestinian teen, which made the feeling of a boundary splitting the city even more acute.

Next to the olive trees are large blocks of concrete with which the Israeli security forces blocked the road to nearby villages, as a collective punishment meted out to Palestinians involved in the violence. A police van still occasionally blocks the road.

Yaari provides fascinating documentation of the complexity of Palestinian life in Jerusalem: On the one hand, efforts to achieve social and economic integration in Israeli society; on the other, tenacious adherence to a Palestinian and Islamic identity, and to waging the struggle against the occupation. Above all, though, the book offers a picture of an intimate, unforgettable acquaintanceship between neighbors on the two sides of the border in Jerusalem.

“‘Beyond the mountains of darkness’ is a phrase aimed at the readers,” Yaari says, in an interview with Haaretz. “It’s not really beyond the hills of darkness. The people there have ears, eyes and a political viewpoint, and we don’t know them.”

Yaari, a former air force fighter pilot, was a correspondent, editor and anchorman and Channel 1 news, and afterward director general of the New Israel Fund. He left the NIF, which works to advance democracy and equality in Israel, in 2010, just before it became the focus of a demonization campaign by right-wing politicians.

Two years ago, not long after his doctors told him he needed heart surgery, his second grandchild was born. That occurred the day after a heavy snowstorm hit Jerusalem. For a moment, he writes, he felt as though he was in the Russia of his grandfather, his blood carrying memories of frigid winter scenes. He was born in the East, he notes, in Jerusalem on the edge of the desert, but on that winter’s day, he felt momentarily disconnected from this land. Then a voice sliced through the imagined snowy silence – the call of the muezzin, “Allah hu akbar,” “God is most great” – and he was instantly catapulted back to Jerusalem, to the village across from his home, whose sounds he heard but whose residents he didn’t know.

Like many residents of West Jerusalem, Yaari admits, he is ignorant when it comes to East Jerusalem and its inhabitants. “The line exists, make no mistake about it,” he says. “Formally, though, Jerusalem has been one unit for the past 50 years. I am ashamed that I don’t know the language and that I didn’t act earlier. I say this with embarrassment.”

Following his operation, he obeyed his doctors’ orders and started to take walks. At one point, not far from his house, “I came to a descent, and to avoid having to exert myself by climbing back up afterward, I kept walking toward Tsur Baher,” he recalls.

The first person he met, by the olive trees, was a shepherd named Sallah Abu Kaff, who told him that herding sheep was just a hobby and that he was actually truck driver by profession. That conceptual duality, between livelihood and the everyday, on the one hand, and preconceived “Orientalist” images, on the other, would return.

Jerusalem Day in the Old City - a story from the Jewish Daily Forward

From the Forward, a story on the celebration of Jerusalem Day in the Old City.

‘Go to Hell, Leftist’ and Other Jerusalem Day Slogans

By Leanne Gale | May 29, 2014, 12:30pm

The crowd enters Jerusalem’s Old City singing racist chants / A. Daniel Roth Photography

As I made my way out of the Muslim Quarter, the dark alleyways suddenly seemed too quiet. Just moments before, crowds of ultranationalist Jewish celebrants had marched through this same space shouting “Death to Arabs.” Children had banged against shuttered Palestinian homes with wooden sticks and Israeli police had stood by as teenagers chanted “Muhammad is dead.” Now, all that remained were eerie remnants of their presence: “Kahane Tzadak” (Kahane was right) stickers plastered over closed Palestinian shops and the ground littered with anti-Muslim flyers. As Israeli police and soldiers began to unblock closures, Palestinian residents of the Muslim Quarter cautiously ventured outside. This is the only time I cried. 

Jerusalem Day marks the anniversary of the Israeli conquest of East Jerusalem in 1967. The March of Flags has become an annual tradition in which thousands of ultranationalist Jewish celebrants parade through the city waving Israeli flags. It culminates in a dramatic march through the Muslim Quarter, generally accompanied by racist slogans and incitement to violence. Israeli police arrive in the area earlier in the day, sealing off entry to Palestinian residents “for their own safety.” Those Palestinians who live in the Muslim Quarter are encouraged to close their shops and stay indoors, while any Palestinian counter-protest is quickly dispersed.

Growing up at the Solomon Schechter Day School of Long Island, I have fond memories of Jerusalem Day. We celebrated every year with school-wide assemblies and dances, singing “Sisu et Yerushalayim” (Rejoice in Jerusalem) and “Jerusalem of Gold” with pride. Even in high school, I never knew the political significance of the day or imagined that my joy might be at someone else’s expense. Today, I know better.

I made a conscious decision to attend the March of Flags this year. As an intern at Ir Amim, an Israeli organization committed to fostering a more equitable and sustainable Jerusalem, I helped coordinate a group of volunteers to document racist slogans, police responses to incitement, and restrictions on Palestinian mobility. While I thought I knew exactly what to expect, I find myself feeling numb as I write these words. 

Revealed: What a partitioned Jerusalem would look like

An Israeli firm has been working for 10 years to perfect plans that would transform the city's 'natural' urban boundaries into a border between two future countries, in a nonthreatening and aesthetic manner.

By Nir Hasson | May 27, 2014 | 1:09 PM | Haaretz

Almost since Jerusalem was reunited after the Six-Day War 47 years ago – an event being commemorated today, Jerusalem Day – various ideas have been proposed as to how the city can be redivided. Possible partition lines were drawn during peace talks at Camp David and Taba in 2000-2001, in U.S. President Bill Clinton’s Oval Office and in the bureaus of former Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert.

But for the most part, these discussions ended with drawing lines on a map and debate over how to apportion sovereignty to the sites in the area known as the Holy Basin, which includes the Old City and its immediate surroundings.

Very few, if any, sought to figure out whether Jerusalem could actually be divided again – and if so, how would the border look? Would a wall be built in the heart of the city? Where would the crossing points be, and who would be able to use them? What would become of the network of roads and the public transportation system in the area? And so on and so forth.

Click here for the interactive map or see this page.

East Jerusalem neighborhoods cut off from water supply since early March 2014

B'tselem reports on the water situation for Palestinians for several neighborhoods in Jerusalem on the other side of the Separation Wall:

Serious neglect of neighborhoods cut off by Separation Barrier: 3 month without regular running water 

Published:  27 May 2014 

In early March 2014 Hagihon, Jerusalem’s water utility company, stopped the regular supply of running water to several neighborhoods in north-east Jerusalem, namely: Shu’fat Refugee Camp, Ras Khamis, Ras Sh’hadeh and Dahiyat a-Salam (literally: Neighborhood of Peace), which have all been isolated from the rest of Jerusalem by the Separation Barrier. Some homes in these neighborhoods have been completely cut off from the water supply; others receive water intermittently; and as for the rest, the water pressure in the pipes is so low that the water does not reach the faucets. As a result, an estimated 60,000-80,000 Palestinians – mostly permanent residents of Israel – have been left without a regular water supply. The residents spent three weeks in making repeated applications to Hagihon and to the Jerusalem Municipality, seeking to have running water restored. When their requests went unheeded, on 25 March 2013, ACRI petitioned the High Court of Justice seeking to have the water supply renewed without delay.

The fact that tens of thousands of people have been cut off from the water system is but another outcome of the severe and ongoing neglect of the residents of Jerusalem neighborhoods separated by the Separation Barrier from the rest of East Jerusalem. The construction of the barrier and the isolation of these neighborhoods have led to a state of neglect even more severe than that endured by east Jerusalem neighborhoods for decades. 

On 2 April 2014 the Court instructed the State to respond to ACRI’s petition within 60 days, setting the deadline for the first week of June. In the meantime, the residents of these neighborhoods have no regular running water. 

For further information on ACRI’s website, click here. 

Pope Lays Wreath at Tomb of Zionism’s Founder

New York Times

By JODI RUDOREN MAY 26, 2014

JERUSALEM — A conflict largely defined by dueling narratives became a battle of competing imagery during Pope Francis’ sojourn through the Holy Land, with Palestinians and Israelis both seizing on the pontiff’s strong symbolic gestures to promote their perspectives.

A day after a photograph of Francis touching his forehead to the graffiti-scarred concrete barrier separating Bethlehem from Jerusalem rocketed around the Internet, the pope acceded to Israel’s request that he add to his packed Monday morning another unscheduled stop, at the Mount Herzl memorial to victims of terrorist attacks. There, too, Francis bowed his head, while pressing a hand to one of 78 tablets listing the names of the fallen.

“I explained to the pope that building the security fence prevented many more victims that Palestinian terror — which continues today — planned to harm,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said afterward. Later, he added, “I long for the day in which Pope Francis’ call to recognize the state of Israel, the right of Jews to a state of their own, to live in security and peace, will be accepted by our neighbors.”

That was just one of the poignant photo opportunities of the pope at some of Judaism’s most sacred sites. He placed a note with the prayer “Our Father” handwritten in Spanish between the ancient stones of the Western Wall. He kissed the hands of six survivors — one saved as a baby by a Catholic family — at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial. He became the first Vatican leader to lay a wreath of signature yellow and white flowers on the tomb of Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism.

Pope, in Mideast, Invites Leaders to Meet on Peace

New York Times

By JODI RUDOREN, JIM YARDLEY and ISABEL KERSHNER MAY 25, 2014

JERUSALEM — Pope Francis inserted himself directly into the collapsed Middle East peace process on Sunday, issuing an invitation to host the Israeli and Palestinian presidents for a prayer summit meeting at his apartment in the Vatican, in an overture that has again underscored the broad ambitions of his papacy.

Francis took the unexpected step in Bethlehem, where he became the first pontiff ever to fly directly into the West Bank and to refer to the Israeli-occupied territory as the “State of Palestine.”

After describing the overall situation between Israel and the Palestinians as “increasingly unacceptable,” the pope made a dramatic, unscheduled stop at Israel’s contentious concrete barrier separating Bethlehem from Jerusalem, where he prayed and touched his head against the graffiti-covered wall.

“There is a need to intensify efforts and initiatives aimed at creating the conditions for a stable peace based on justice, on the recognition of rights for every individual, and on mutual security,” Francis said. Peace “must resolutely be pursued, even if each side has to make certain sacrifices.”

Presidents Shimon Peres of Israel and Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority accepted the pope’s invitation to pray together; Mr. Abbas’s spokesman said the meeting would take place June 6.

ACRI Report: ‘Poverty, blight and neglect’ in east Jerusalem

By Lidar Gravé-Lazi
26/05/2014

Jerusalem Post

According to the report, only six percent of east Jerusalem children attend public preschools, despite being entitled to a free education.

More than three quarters of the residents of Jerusalem’s Arab neighborhoods – 75.3 percent of the total and 82.2 percent of children – live below the poverty line, according to a report released by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) on Monday.

The annual Facts and Figures Report, released ahead of Jerusalem Day, surveyed the situation in eastern Jerusalem and found “a frightening picture of poverty, blight, and neglect.”

According to the report, the area’s population comprises slightly more than one third of the city’s residents, while only 14 percent is zoned for residential construction.

The report also stated that, since 1967, one third of all Arab-owned land in Jerusalem was “confiscated” and used to build tens of thousands of homes for Jewish residents. In addition, some 35% of zoned areas in Arab neighborhoods were designated as “open landscape areas” upon which it is forbidden to build.

The report also cited “difficulties” with regard to fresh water access and a “dire shortage” of some 50 kilometers of sewerage pipes in the eastern part of the capital. “In the absence of appropriate sewerage, the residents are forced to use septic tanks that repeatedly flood, resulting in a host of public hazards,” the report stated.

With regard to the construction of 142 km of the security barrier, the report cited that “the closure of checkpoints and a policy of requiring entry permits have cut east Jerusalem off from the rest of the West Bank and led to a weakening in the social and economic conditions of residents.”

According to the report, more than 100,000 residents of the neighborhoods of Ras Khamis, Ras Shahada, Dahyat a-Salam, the Shuafat refugee camp, Kafr Aqeb, and Samiramis were cut off from the rest of Jerusalem by the barrier, and have “suffered from abject neglect ever since.”

“Despite the fact that the neighborhoods are located within the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem in an area that was annexed by the State of Israel, they do not receive even the most basic services. There are only three schools operating in the area; there is no garbage collection; no playgrounds, street lamps, or sidewalks; many roads are unpaved or not maintained, and public transportation is sparse,” the report stated.

With regard to education, the report stated that only 53 percent of Palestinian students attend public schools, in part due to a shortage of more than 2,000 classrooms. The report also noted that while all children over the age of three are entitled to a free education, only six percent of east Jerusalem children between the ages of three and four attend public preschools, due to a shortage of some 400 classrooms.

Source: ACRI Report: Poverty, blight, and neglect in East Jerusalem

Jerusalem Institute Statistical Abstract

PRESS RELEASE

Data of the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies 

on the occasion of Jerusalem Day 2014 

Population as of the end of 2012
▪ In 2012 the population of Jerusalem totaled some 815,300 inhabitants of which 515,200 (63%) were Jews and others (non-Arabs) and 300,200 (37%) Arabs.

▪ Since 1967, the population of Jerusalem has tripled, climbing from 266,300 inhabitants in 1967 to 815,300 inhabitants in 2012. The Jewish population grew by a factor of 2.6 while the Arab population grew by a factor of 4.4.

▪ Population distribution based on religion: Jews 502,830 (62%), Muslims 288,170 (35%), Christians 14,800 (2%) out of which approximately 12,000 were Christian Arabs, others with no religious attribution (1%).

▪ In 2012, the population of Jerusalem increased by 1.5% (12,400 inhabitants): The Jewish population grew by 0.9% (4,700) while the Arab population grew by 2.6% (7,650). These data indicate that the growth of the Arab population is higher than that of the Jewish population, both in relative and absolute terms.

▪ In 2012 Jerusalem's population grew by 1.5%, the lowest recorded rate of growth over the previous 15 years. Four years during this period (2000, 2002, 2008, 2009) saw a low growth rate of 1.6%-1.7% while in the remainder of years the growth rate was 1.9%-2.1%. Jerusalem's growth rate is higher than that of Haifa and Rishon LeZion (1.0%) and somewhat higher than that of Tel Aviv (1.4%).

▪ The growth rate of the Jewish population in 2012 stood at 0.9%, lower in comparison with previous years. During this period only four years (2000, 2002, 2008, 2009) saw a low growth rate of 0.9%-1.0% while in the remainder of years the growth rate was 1.1%-1.4%.

▪ The growth rate of the Arab population in 2012 stood at 2.6%. During this period only two years (2009, 2010) saw a low growth rate of 2.9% while in the remainder of years the growth rate was 3.0%-4.0%. Generally speaking, there is a discernible drop in the growth rate of the Arab population in Jerusalem.

Link to summary report - http://jiis.org/.upload/Jerusalem%20Press%20Release.pdf

Mass on Mount Zion Stirs Ancient Rivalries

May 27, 2014

JERUSALEM — The intimate Mass celebrated by Pope Francis on Monday in the Cenacle, the hall on Jerusalem’s Mount Zion venerated by Christians as the room of the Last Supper, capped a Holy Land pilgrimage meant to promote peace and tolerance.

But ancient rivalries lurk just beneath the flagstones here, and the pope’s visit has brought them to the surface. Also holy to Jews and Muslims as the traditional burial place of the biblical King David, a prophet in Islam, Mount Zion has become a crucible of competing religious claims that touch on one of the most sensitive issues in the Middle East conflict.

“Here the church was born, and was born to go forth,” the pope said in his homily. “To go forth, to set out, does not mean to forget. The church, in her going forth, preserves the memory of what took place here.”

On the lower floor, by David’s Tomb, Jews pray in a space that, for all intents and purposes, has become a synagogue. Many of the stone buildings that make up the rest of the Mount Zion compound, which sits just outside Jerusalem’s Old City walls, have been taken over by the Diaspora Yeshiva, a Jewish seminary.

With the pope’s visit, opposition has grown in ultra-Orthodox and nationalist religious Jewish circles to a deal between Israel and the Vatican to allow increased Christian prayer times. Many also believe that the Vatican is seeking ownership of the Cenacle, though Israeli and church officials have denied that. One rumor had it that Pope Francis was considering moving to Mount Zion.

“We are aware of the complexities,” said the Rev. Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the custos of the Holy Land, the Holy See’s representative who cares for pilgrims visiting holy shrines. “But we claim the right to pray in the place like everyone else.”