Restoring the Old City

Both Jewish Israelis and Palestinians would like to restore the old city, but each has a different understanding of what this would mean. A Palestinian perspective on this conflict in English is available in a booklet entitled Israeli Settlement Policy in Jerusalem: Facts on the Ground, which was published in 1998 by the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs (PASSIA).

PASSIA is an Arab, non-profit organization that is not affiliated with any government, political party, or other organization. Its publications contain the following commitment: "PASSIA endeavors that research undertaken under its auspices be specialized, scientific and objective and that its symposia and workshops, whether international or intra-Palestinian, be open, self-critical and conducted in a spirit of harmony and cooperation."

In my first letter concerning the Old City I summarized the long history of Jerusalem and also the division of the present Old City into four quarters, within a wall that now has eight gates. In this letter I will primarily describe changes in the Old City after 1967, when the Israelis gained control over the Old City and began to change the facts on the ground.

Prior to the 1920s Arabs and Jews lived together largely in peace within the Old City. An increase in the migration of Jews and support for a Jewish state by Great Britain, which ruled the area under a League of Nations mandate, led to Arab riots in 1929 and a revolt against British occupation in 1936. The result was a separation of Arabs and Jews within the Old City, and also to some extent in the area immediately around it.

In 1947 Arabs (both Muslim and Christian) owned 99% of the land within the walls of the Old City, and Jews 1 %. In the Jewish Quarter, however, there were many Jewish families holding long-term leases from their Arab landlords that gave them a "protected tenancy" status. The population in of the Old City in 1947 was 33,600 Arab residents and 2,400 Jewish residents.

The war in 1948 was savage within the Old City, as neighbors fought and fled from their homes into areas that became either Jewish and Arab, before the Arab Legion in May 1948 expelled all remaining Jews from the Old City. As Arabs looted or destroyed Jewish homes in the Old City, to the west Jewish forces (the Haganah and the Lechi) were destroying Arab villages, and the survivors of these attacks sought refuge in the Old City. In short, Jews fled violence by leaving the Old City, and Arabs fled violence by entering the Old City.

Between 1949 and 1967, the Old City was under the jurisdiction of the government of Jordan, which guarded the border with Israel, but provided few services and little assistance to the city’s residents. In this period the main business of the Old City was tourism, which was primarily Christian, but also included Muslims and secular Westerners.

Between 1948 and early 1967, Jews could not enter the Old City but only look into it from Mount Zion, which is directly to the south and higher on the hill. Victory in the 1967 war led Jews to see their new control over the Old City as God’s will, and a sign that Israel as a Jewish nation would have its rightful place among the nations. Jews flocked from all over the world to pray at the Western Wall beneath the Temple Mount for the restoration of ancient Israel.

Between the 1948 and 1967 wars the area now identified as the Jewish Quarter was home to 6,000 Palestinians, many of whom came into the Old City as refugees from villages in West Jerusalem that had been destroyed by Israeli forces during the first war. After the second war these residents were expelled from the Old City, and 700 buildings were destroyed in the area previously known as the Sharaf neighborhood. The Israeli government expropriated the land, conducted an archeological dig, and then rebuilt the Jewish Quarter, increasing its size fourfold, as part of its effort to "reclaim" the Jewish heritage of the Old City.

Now, when entering the Jewish Quarter from the west, walking down through the Armenian Quarter along St. James Street, you will see a sign that welcomes visitors to the Jewish Quarter and reads, "Restored 1974." Almost immediately you will also notice the remains of the Hurvrah Synagogue as well as the adjacent Sidna Omar Mosque. The Jordanian Arab Legion destroyed the synagogue in 1948, and it is in ruins except for a reconstructed arch that memorializes the expulsion of Jews from the Old City during Israel’s war of independence. The mosque is sealed, but preserved to show that the Israeli’s government is protecting the Muslim and Christian religious sites under its control.

Entering the Jewish Quarter now from the Dung Gate leads directly to the large plaza in front of the Western Wall, with archeological museums to the left and a view of ancient remains to the right. The newly constructed buildings above the plaza offer a wonderful view of the Western Wall and also, from the top of the stairs, of the golden Dome of the Rock. It is hard to imagine that thousands of people once lived where today taxis and buses park, as these vehicles transport the many visitors that pass through the security checkpoint in order to reach the large, open plaza in front of the Western Wall.

The Israeli government has claimed that its confiscation of property in the Jewish Quarter after the 1967 war simply returned to Jewish ownership property taken by the Jordanians between 1948 and 1967. But in 1947 Arabs owned almost all the property in what was then a much smaller "Jewish Quarter," although it is certainly true that many of these Arab landowners rented their properties to Jews on long-term leases.

One impressive stone house left standing in the Jewish Quarter has a clearly documented history of ownership. Located at the intersection of Shonei Halakhot and HaKhoma in the northwest corner of the Jerusalem Quarter, the Burqan family has deeds and titles proving ownership for 400 years. The Burqans battled in the Israeli courts from 1968 until 1975, when the Israeli Supreme Court confirmed their ownership, but ruled on the grounds of "public utility" that the family had no right to live in their house. In 1977 Israeli police forced the Burqan family out of their home. When the house was sold at a public auction, the Burqan family tried to buy back their house, but were informed that Arabs were not permitted to bid for the property.

In 1998 the Muslim Quarter housed about 22,000 Arabs, 62 Jewish settler families, and 400 Yeshiva students of the Ateret Cohanim movement. Now the number of Jewish occupants has increased considerably, because of coercive government policies and aggressive settler tactics.

The government’s primary weapon for confiscating property is the 1950 Israeli Absentee Property Law, which gives the Israeli government legal authority to expropriate the property of owners who are declared "absentee." This includes all those who were forced out, or who fled for the lives, and have not been allowed to return to Israel. After the Custodian of Absentee Property seizes properties, the Custodian has the power under the Development Authority (Transfer of Property) Law to sell these properties to the Israeli Land Administration. Then the Israeli Land Administration may lease the properties for development to the Jewish National Fund, the World Zionist Organization, or the Zionist Agency for Development.

These laws render the deeds and titles of landowners null and void, and effectively allow the shifting of property from Arab to Jewish control. Adjacent to Herod’s Gate, at the top of the Muslim Quarter, is a large property that in this way was transferred to the Custodian of Absentee Property, who then transferred ownership to a group of Jewish settlers. As Housing Minister, Ariel Sharon promoted a plan for redeveloping next to this property the entire section of the Muslim Quarter between from Herod’s Gate and the northeast corner of the Old City.

This section in the Muslim Quarter, know as the Burj Laqlaq Quarter, includes three parcels of land: a plot owned by the Darwish family, a second plot belonging to the Khalidi family, and a third piece of land that the Russian Orthodox Church sold to the city. In 1991, when Sharon proposed that the government build 200 housing units for Jewish settlers in this corner of the Old City, the Burj Laqlaq Community Association adopted a creative strategy to try to resist the expropriation of the Darwish and Khalidi land, most of which was undeveloped.

Wearing kippas (yarmulkas) on their heads in order to disguise themselves as settlers, so the police would overlook what they were doing, members of Community Association constructed a playground a soccer field, and a community center with programs for children, handicapped persons, and the elderly. But in 1996 the Israeli government used bulldozers to demolish the buildings and to destroy the playground and soccer field.

Two years later settlers supported by Ateret Cohanim erected seven tin shacks on part of the property. After violent protests and international complaints, the mayor said the shacks had to be demolished because they lacked valid permits, although he stated publicly he was not opposed in principle to settler construction on the property. After negotiations with city authorities, the settlers were allowed to take down their shacks, and then began an archeological dig on the land under the supervision of the Israeli Antiquities Authority. Today, as you walk out of the Old City from the Muslilm Quarter through Herod’s Gate, you will see an Israeli flag hanging to your right as you pass my the Ateret Cohanim compound above the Arab shops below.  (The Flowers Gate project identified on the map above is now scheduled to be built on this site. Note: 11 February 2007).

A tour might be given of properties occupied by Jews associated with Ateret Cohanim in the formerly Arab section of the Old City, for as of 1998 this group had "returned" (to use their term) more than 70 properties to Jewish ownership, 30 of which are located in the Muslim Quarter. Founded in the 1980s with the explicit mandate to "Judaize" the Old City, Ateret Cohanim claims that Jews were a majority of the Old City’s population (and 70% of the Muslim Quarter) before Arab riots in 1929 and 1936 drove them out. They also argue that in a democracy citizens should have the right to live anywhere they choose and can afford to purchase property, rather than being confined to "ethnic" quarters.

Ateret Cohanim says it operates legally, if covertly for the protection of the sellers, but it has been accused of forging documents and resorting to blackmail to induce property owners to sell. Nonetheless, after Ehud Olmert was elected as major of Jerusalem in 1993, he helped raise funds for Ateret Cohanim and embraced its goal of ensuring "complete rule of the people of Israel over the entire city."

Similarly, Ariel Sharon, as Minister of Infrastructure, reportedly raised 20 million dollars for Ateret Cohanim at a New York fundraising event. Then, in 1987, Sharon took possession of a house in the Muslim Quarter close to Damascus Gate, which Ateret Cohanim purchased from a Palestinian family.

The eviction of Mrs. Na’iala Zaru from her apartment in the Muslim Quarter, east of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, involved a similar Jewish organization known as Ateret L’Yoshna. In the 1980s it purchase a property owned by a Jewish family, but leased under a long-term protected tenancy agreement to Palestinian families, including the Zaru family. Mrs. Zaru won a victory in a lower court, which affirmed her right under a protected tenancy to remain in her apartment when the property changed ownership. But another court overturned this ruling, and in 1998 the police put her on the street along with her home furnishings.

From 1950 to 1990 an Armenian lived with a protected tenancy lease in St. John’s Hospice, which was established by a Greek Orthodox monk more than a hundred years before. In April 1990 during the Orthodox Easter, 150 settlers associated with Ateret Cohanim moved into this prominent property, which is located opposite Muristan Square in the Christian Quarter. The settlers claimed that the property had belonged to Jewish merchants, who were forced to leave by rioting Arabs in 1929. In subsequent publications they described their occupation of the property as the beginning of the rightful restoration of Jews to the Christian Quarter of the Old City.

The group of settlers, called the Lights of David, claimed to have purchased the property from the Armenian tenant, but the funds they used were traced to the Israeli Ministry of Housing, then under Ariel Sharon. The timing during Holy Week, and the nearness to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, angered the Christian Palestinian community and led to local and well as international protests. The Armenian, who supposedly sold the property, only had a permanent tenancy, and ownership was claimed by the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate. The sale of the property is being challenged in the courts, but settlers have been allowed to remain in the building.

A move of quite a different sort occurred in 1996 opposite the First Station of the Cross on the Via Dolorosa. Just before dawn on September 24th, the Israeli army opened an exit to the tunnel that leads from the plaza by the Western Wall alongside the foundations of the Haram Al-Sharif (Temple Mount). Called the Hasmonean Tunnel, this tourist attraction had been open for several years, but without an exit at the north end. Muslim authorities had strongly protested excavations in the area, and had specifically demanded that an exit for the tunnel not be opened.

Although opening the exit could not in itself have harmed the foundations of the Haram Al-Sharif, the unilateral decision by the Israeli government led to widespread violence in the West Bank, which resulted in the deaths of 14 Israelis and 59 Palestinians. Moreover, the large number of tourists that now come out of the tunnel through the north exit, as well as the military force required for security at the exit, disrupt the movement of Christian pilgrims along the Via Dolorosa to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

The PASSIA study, which I have tried to summarize and update, includes a map that shows where Jewish Israelis have resettled in the Muslim and Christian Quarters of the Old City. So a contemporary tourist, with this information, can walk through the Old City with "eyes to see" its recent history, as well as its contemporary bustle and ancient legacies.

We might agree with the assertion of Jewish settlers that Israelis should have the right to live anywhere they can afford, if those who make this assertion would also affirm the right of Arab Israelis to purchase property in the Jewish Quarter. Moreover, we would argue that this right should be extended to the settlements as well, which are now entirely Jewish. In addition, we might well agree that the return of Jews who were made refugees by violence, or compensation for their losses, is entirely reasonable. So long as Palestinians, who were made refugees by violence, are also allowed to return, or are similarly given compensation for their losses.

Unfortunately, the Jews who are committed to restoring the Old City by creating Jewish Israeli settlements in the Muslim and Christian Quarters, are silent when it comes to supporting equal rights for Arab Israelis and for Palestinians. Moreover, these settlers and their supporters seek to restore the Old City by using coercion and exploiting unjust laws and corrupting officials. Therefore, it seems fair to conclude that justice will only be served by exposing and resisting these illegal and unethical practices.

Bob Traer, 22  April 2005

I am writing as a participant in the Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel, which is sponsored by the World Council of Churches. The views expressed above are personal and do not necessarily represent the World Council of Churches. If you wish to publish or disseminate this letter beyond personal friends, please contact the EAPPI Communications Officer (eappi-co@jrol.com) for permission to do so. Thank you.

For photos taken in the Old City, go to http://christian-bible.com/Ethics/jerusalem.photos5.htm. 

For other Letters from Jerusalem, go to http://christian-bible.com/Ethics/lj.letters.2005.htm. 

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