semitism.net

With all eyes focused on the Disengagement, Israel continues to consolidate its hold on Jerusalem, foreclosing the possiblity of a shared capital in a final negotiation with the Palestinians. First there was the Maale Adumim tender, expanding settlement on Jerusalem’s eastern border to the tune of thirty-five hundred new housing units; then the Jerusalem Envelope plan, described here, which places all but a distant Palestinian neighborhood on the Israeli side of the separation wall; and now, YNet reports, city planners have approved construction of a Jewish neighborhood in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City, breaking a de facto ethnic segregation that has prevailed in the city for decades…

The plan to build 21 apartments for Jews in the walled Old City’s Muslim Quarter was approved 5-2 by a local Planning Board, said Yosef Alalu, a dovish city council member who is on the committee. The plan must go through several more bureaucratic stages before final approval…

“It is clear that when the first tractor puts down the first stone it will lead to the next uprising and could have international impact,” Alalu said.

The Old City consists of four quarters - Muslim, Christian, Jewish and Armenian. Today, just a few Jewish families live in the Muslim Quarter, in fortified complexes.

About a dozen properties are owned by Jews, including Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who bought an apartment there in 1987. For several years, Sharon used the apartment to hold political meetings but today rarely visits the heavily guarded compound.

The plan - which has been in the works for several years - would violate a city ban on building within 10 meters (11 yards) of the Old City wall, Alalu claimed.

Helena Cobham offers this brief history of the ethnic divide in the Old City:

The present walls of Jerusalem’s Old City were built by the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. But most of the structures inside their enclosure–including the whole Muslim Haram al-Sharif area with its two holy mosques; the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and numerous other ancient churches; and the foundations of the Jewish Temple– are far, far older than the walls. In line with traditional Islamic principles of city planing, the city is divided into four ethnic/religious “quarters”– the Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and Armenian Quarters.

At the end of the 1947-48 fighting that accompanied the birth of the State of Israel, the whole Old City remained in the hands of the Jordanian Army, while the infant Israeli forces held the city’s more modern western suburbs. On each side of the armistice line there was near-total ethnic cleansing. The Jordanians evicted some 2,000 Jewish residents from the Old City’s Jewish Quarter, and the Israelis evicted some 60,000 Palestinians from West Jerusalem and nearby villages.

After Israel conquered the Old City (and the rest of the West Bank) from Jordan in 1967, it immediately set about establishing a strong Jewish presence in the Old City. It notably did not allow any reciprocal “return” by the Palestinians of West Jerusalem to the properties from which they’d been evicted 19 years earlier.

In addition, it knocked down the whole, Muslim-populated “Mughrabiyyeh” quarter next to the Wailing Wall (Ha-Kotel), in order to make the open plaza where nowadays many Jewish and Israeli ceremonies are held. Land records from the time showed that the clearing of that area involved demolishing 135 homes, two ancient mosques, and a Sufi zawia (shrine).

Nowadays, the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem is a thriving, densely-populated hub of Jewish-Israeli life. But settler activists– including, in an earlier era, Ariel Shatron– have also been covertly acquiring and establishing tiny settlemnt footholds throughout the city’s other quarters.

In a comment on Helena’s site, Jonathan Edelstein points out that the construction plan is only in the proposal stage. There are many hurdles to clear before it’s approved. True, and perhaps that will also provide opportunities for protest. It seems clear, though, that the proposal is part of a pattern of “Judaizing” Jerusalem.

One might hope that someday the segregated neighborhoods will disappear and that Jerusalem will be an integrated, multi-ethnic city. Unfortunately, this proposal is not a move in that direction.