News agencies are reporting this evening that Israel has put out a call for bids “to build more than 300 new homes in a disputed east Jerusalem neighborhood”.
Actually, the area affected is Har Homa, just outside Bethlehem (which is just to the south of the main area of Jerusalem); the site is known in Arabic as Jebel Gheneim, and when Israel first began building on this hill top between Jerusalem and Bethlehem in 1997 — in the middle of the Oslo process — the UN Security Council met in crisis session for weeks on the matter.
The Jebel Gheneim area was one of the most beautiful green wooded hilltops in Palestine, say the Palestinians. Now, it is covered with buildings, and a 10-or 12-story hotel has gone up recently, apparently to accomodate visitors.
The Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem (ARIJ), which is actually located just inside The Wall in Bethlehem, offers these views:
Here are two images of Jebel Abu Gheneim/Har Homa from 1997 posted on the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs website –
(1) the view of the green forest:
(2) Planned construction – red indicates roads, green indicates open public areas, other colors indicate various construction plans
AP reported today that “A Housing Ministry spokesman said 307 units would be built in Har Homa, a Jewish neighborhood in east Jerusalem … Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said he sent an urgent message to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, asking her to block the project from moving forward”.
However, Israel says this is not a settlement, so it will not be frozen, as Israel should do if it’s to fulfill its Phase One Road Map requirements. AP added that ” ‘Israel makes a clear distinction between the West Bank and Jerusalem’, said Mark Regev, spokesman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. ‘Israel has never made a commitment to limit our sovereignty in Jerusalem. Implementation of the first phase of the road map does not apply to Jerusalem’.” The AP news report is posted here.
Agence France Press reported that “The Palestinians slammed the move as an attempt to undermine the renewed peace drive which was officially launched after a seven-year hiatus at an international peace conference in the United States last week. ‘The Israel Land Administration has published a tender for the construction of 307 housing units in Har Homa’, an official in the housing ministry told AFP, referring to a neighbourhood in east Jerusalem. At the Annapolis conference last week, Israel and the Palestinians pledged to implement the 2003 roadmap plan, the first phase of which calls on Israel to freeze all settlement activity and for Palestinians to improve security … Israel does not consider construction in east Jerusalem — which it captured in the 1967 Six-Day war — as settlement growth because it annexed the Arab part of the Holy City shortly after the conflict [actually, Israel extended its administration to East Jerusalem in 1967, but it announced only in 1980 that Jerusalem would be Israel's eternal and undivided capital -- the UN declared this action null and void, and, despite Israel's invitation, only three or four countries have moved their embassies to Jerusalem]. ‘The neighbourhood is under the jurisdiction of the Jerusalem municipality and does not require any authorisation of the defence ministry’, which issues construction permits for settlements in the West Bank, the official said. But the annexation of east Jerusalem has not been recognised by the international community, and Palestinians want to make it the capital of their future state. Palestinian peace negotiator Saeb Erakat lambasted the move, which comes a week before Israeli and Palestinian teams are to hold their first talks on a permanent peace deal which the sides aim to clinch by the end of 2008. ‘This blatant Israeli violation of the roadmap will destroy any trust among all the nations that have participated in the Annapolis conference’, Erakat said in a statement. ‘If Israel does not backtrack and cancel this settlement decision it will undermine the results of the Annapolis conference before they have even begun to be implemented’, he added”. The AFP report is here.
The Israeli press is now reporting that, after a few anxious hours, “Jerusalem police on Sunday lifted a red alert which had been in force in the city throughout the afternoon, police said. The heightened alert, which was imposed at lunchtime in the wake of intelligence warnings over an impending terror attack in or around the city, came two days before the US sponsored peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland. It was not immediately clear if the would-be assailants were caught.
The red-alert was lowered at 3:30 p.m. on the instructions of Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) which had first put police on alert at midday. Throughout the afternoon, police were conducting spot checks on vehicles at the entrances to the city causing unusually heavy traffic congestion in the capital, and were increasing border police patrols on the northern and southern outskirts of the city. Magen David Adom rescue services had gone on the highest state of alert in the wake of the initial announcement of the police red alert … Police periodically issue red alerts in the wake of an amalgamation of intelligence warnings indicating an impending Palestinian suicide bombing”. The JPost report that the red alert had been lifted in Jerusalem is here.
Media coverage of Jerusalem Mayor Lupolianski’s press conference last week to announce a “Marshall Plan” for Jerusalem was skimpy and perfunctory.
The Washington Post reproduced a report from the Associated Press that summed it up this way: “The mayor of Jerusalem announced a plan Wednesday to revamp long-neglected Arab neighborhoods, a step meant to counter growing signs that Israel’s leadership is willing to consider ceding parts of the city to the Palestinians. The news from Mayor Uri Lupolianski appeared timed for release before a crucial Mideast peace conference in Annapolis, Md., next week meant to relaunch talks on an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, and any such agreement will necessarily mean sharing Jerusalem. ‘Today, unfortunately, people are busy talking about Jerusalem’, Lupolianski said at a news conference. ‘Through our actions, we will unify and strengthen Jerusalem’. Lupolianski termed the initiative the ‘Marshall Plan for east Jerusalem’, referring to the successful U.S. aid program for Europe after World War II, and said it was meant to correct years of neglect. Israel captured east Jerusalem from Jordan in 1967 and annexed it. Today, around one-third of the city’s 750,000 residents are Palestinians, living in east Jerusalem neighborhoods that lag far behind Jewish areas in employment, infrastructure and education. Palestinians said the new plan would do little to change that. The plan will see the city invest around $51 million in the central neighborhoods of east Jerusalem, sprucing up the area’s underdeveloped commercial center, building parks and hotels, allowing more construction of businesses and homes, and creating closer links with Jewish areas of west Jerusalem, Lupolianski said. Planners have been at work on the projects for the past year, Lupolianski said. But they are still in the early planning stages and need approval from local and regional authorities. That process could take months or years … Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has indicated he might be willing to cede some of the city’s peripheral Arab neighborhoods, but that position remains far from the Palestinian demand for control over all of east Jerusalem. Beyond Israel’s emotional attachment to the city, Israelis are concerned that any areas vacated might be taken over by militants, putting Palestinian gunmen just steps away from Jewish neighborhoods .. In 2005, 62 percent of the city’s Arab families lived under the poverty line, according to statistics compiled by the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, an independent research center, compared to 21 percent of Jewish families” … The AP report on the Jerusalem mayor’s Marshall Plan is here.
Jerusalem is one of the major “core issues” that is supposed to be dealt with in Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, if they ever get off the ground. Is Israel about to definitively pre-judge the question?
The Israeli Government Press Office has alerted journalists to a major press conference on Wednesday, in which “The Mayor of Jerusalem, Uri Lupolianski, will reveal tomorrow a comprehensive ‘Marshall Plan’ to upgrade the main business center of eastern Jerusalem. In addition, plans for massive building in eastern Jerusalem and for developing the Muslim Quarter in the Old City will be presented. This is the most comprehensive plan concerning the eastern part of the city since the reunification of Jerusalem. The press conference will be held tomorrow, Wednesday, November 21st, 10:00, at the Jerusalem city hall”…
Israel has declared that Jerusalem is its “eternal and undivided” capital. The Palestinians say that East Jerusalem — the part not occupied by Israel in 1948, but then seized by the IDF in June 1967 — will be the capital of the Palestinian State. Recent Israeli talk about giving back some of those areas of East Jerusalem to the Palestinian Authority has been extremely upsetting to Palestinian residents, whose lives may be about to be disrupted yet again. The offer to return some of these areas, however, appears to be motivated more by “demographic” concerns than by any desire to find a real and workable peaceful solution — the idea seems to be to get rid of as many Palestinians as possible…
