Americans for Peace Now
Jan 7 2010
Jerusalem Blitz (latest news and analysis)
By Lara Friedman on January 7, 2010 3:21 PM | No Comments
Special report from Daniel Seidemann and Lara Friedman
As more reports of new settler activities and settler plans in East
Jerusalem accumulate now on an almost daily basis, it is becoming
clear that we are in the middle of a Jerusalem settlement blitz.
This blitz is part real and part hype. The motivation behind the
blitz is clear: fear that the peace process will take root. The goal
of the blitz is also clear: to prevent this from happening.
The good news here is that the nature of this blitz – consisting of a
combination of relatively obscure, small projects and projects that
are unlikely to actually be implemented – demonstrates how few cards
the settlers and their supporters have to play in Jerusalem.
The bad news is that every report of new provocative plans in
Jerusalem – even reports that are mostly hot air – represents a very
real and tangible blow to the effort to re-launch the peace effort.
As such, the Obama Administration and the international community
cannot let the Israeli government off the hook in Jerusalem – even as
the Israeli government will try to disclaim responsibility, assert
that it has no authority, and will try to downplay the importance of
these Jerusalem provocations. Jerusalem is the first and best test of
how serious the Netanyahu government and the international community
are about peace.
More details on Beit Orot project: A few days ago a new settlement
project on the Mt. Olives, adjacent to the Beit Orot yeshiva, came to
light. It has now been determined that the site in question belonged
originally to the Armenian Church. About 15 years ago a rogue
Armenian Patriarch sold the property to Irving Moskowitz, going into
hiding with the proceeds. The site is located adjacent to the
existing Beit Orot compound, nestled between the Lutheran World
Federation offices and the Papal Nuncio. While the land is owned by
Moskowitz, the project developer has been determined to be Elad (the
settler NGO focused on the Silwan but now branching out to the rest of
the Old City’s Historic Basin). While these details have not yet made
it into the English-language press, they have made the German-language
press (google translate does a great job with this page).
NEW CONTROVERSY – the Seven Arches Hotel: It is being reported in the
Hebrew-language press today that the Seven Arches Hotel (aka the
Intercontinental) was sold to the settlers, who in turn plan to hand
it over to the IDF to be used as a military academy. The report has
not yet made it into the English language press, but was picked up by
the same German-language press report.
This report has not been confirmed and is likely inaccurate – the sale
of this property (which legally is absentee Jordanian government
property) would create a major confrontation between Israel and
Jordan. Moreover, legally any such sale would have to be subject to a
public announcement/bidding process.
Nonetheless, the reports should set off serious alarm bells: it has
been known for some time that the Jerusalem settler have coveted this
property – located at the edge of the Mount of Olive and overlooking
the Old City. Indeed, for some time settlers have been increasingly
using the hotel as a favorite site for public events and to house
visitors, and it is featured prominently on one of the Elad websites
(as the first of a series of "panorama" sites on the Mount of Olives).
The fact that the reports refer to a plan for the settlers to be
granted ownership of the property in a deal that would grant
immediate-term use of the site to the IDF should also set off alarms.
As part of their ongoing – and generally successful – effort to use
ideologically-driven "tourism" to make their highly controversial
goals part of a new pseudo-consensus, they are already giving tours of
Silwan/City of David/Mount of Olives to upwards of 45,000 Israeli
soldiers and officers (as part of a policy viewed by many as
problematic, if not illegal). Thus, even if the report proves
inaccurate, it discloses very real settler aspirations regarding the
hotel and its environs: to take control of a key property at a
strategically sensitive site, to extend their ersatz-Biblical hegemony
over the public domain in its environs by means of fundamentalist
tourism, while receiving the legitimacy bestowed by the association
with the IDF.
NEW CONTROVERSY – Shuafat: It is being widely reported in Israel that
the municipality has approved the establishment of a new settlement
(50 residential units) in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Shuafat.
The facts of this story are the following: First, there is no "news"
right now, other than the fact that the protagonists in this affair
have selected this moment in time to go public with their plans. The
story is really about something that happened in March 2009, when the
Municipality approved 20-30 town plans for East Jerusalem. It appears
that one of these town plans included an area where there is
Jewish-owned land that well-known settler provocateurs – associated
with the right-wing settler organizations of East Jerusalem – want to
develop for Jewish housing in the heart of Shuafat.
There appears to be no reason to assume that the approval of the town
plans in March was a covert initiative to approve right wing settler
schemes in Shuafat. However, assuming ownership of the land is not
at issue, the settlers’ right to try to develop the land according to
the town plan is not at issue, either.
Without in anyway underplaying how problematic this story is – and the
settlers are doing everything they can to make as much noise as
possible and to make this plan appear as grandiose as possible – it
should be recognized that the plan is likely to fail. Jerusalem
settlements that succeed (in the sense of getting Jews to move into
Palestinian areas) fall into two categories: major government-backed
settlements (Gilo, Neve Yaacov, etc) and messianic settlements at
sites that have clear religious resonance (Silwan, Sheikh Jarrah, Ras
al Amud). Private sector efforts to develop non-ideological
settlements in East Jerusalem (like Nof Zion, which boasts beautiful
views of the Old City) have fallen flat. Similarly,
ideologically-motivated efforts to establish settlements in locations
that do not have religious/messianic resonance (As-Sawahra, the
outskirts of Gilo) have likewise failed. With the Shuafat plan, you
have a private initiative that has no economic potential –
non-ideologically motivated Israeli Jews are not going to move to the
middle of Shuafat even for cheap housing – and you have a site that
has no religious/messianic resonance to attract
ideologically-motivated settlers.
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