Settlers Inside The Walls

Don’t hold your breath. With the support of a government still committed to expanding Jewish settlement, the ultranationalists of Ateret Cohanim are building a beachhead in the most sensitive Palestinian community of all, the Old City’s Muslim Quarter. More than 600 settlers now live outside the Jewish Quarter; their number will double with completion of a housing project near Damascus Gate. Many choose sites near the Western Wall and Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest shrine (map). Some envision a day when Israel rebuilds Herod’s Temple in its place. Says Palestinian journalist Majeda al-Batsh, who lives in the Muslim Quarter: “If they’re so nice, why are they coming in with police protection?”

Even before Israel seized Jerusalem in 1967, middle-class Arabs had begun moving out of the Muslim Quarter to escape overcrowding. Arabs charge that subsequent Israeli policy has softened it up for conquest. They contend the government has long denied them permits to refurbish aging homes or build additions. As a result, they say, the tiny, crowded neighborhood has deteriorated. In 1978, a new Likud government stood by when a quiet movement to supplant Old City Arabs began; a few apartments were taken over on grounds that they once belonged to Jews, and two yeshivas opened. Ariel Sharon, now the housing minister, later bought an apartment that he seldom visits, though it is heavily guarded around the clock.

Remaining Old City Arabs are increasingly hemmed in. Government officials have allowed construction of a vast new Jewish housing and commercial complex outside Jaffa Gate, just to the west. That squares with Sharon’s current drive to build homes for 90,000 additional settlers in the occupied territories. Late last year, settlers stormed six houses in Silwan, just outside the Old City walls; they forced the families out at gunpoint. The same settlers have announced plans to build 200 homes for Jews in the village. Meanwhile, economic hardship caused by the sputtering intifada has made cash buyouts attractive to Muslim Quarter residents.

Where cash won’t work, a welter of Turkish, British, Jordanian and Israeli laws governing housing often does. For example, one 1950 law allows Israel to seize the property of any “absentee” Palestinian. Technically, that would include every Palestinian who was in an Arab country, including Jordan, which controlled the Old City from 1948 to 1967. The settlers also get substantial legal and financial support from Sharon’s ministry. Knesset member Dedi Zucker says government officials “know they are bending the law, circumventing the law and breaking the law. " But settler spokeswoman Tehila Rapps says that it all is aboveboard. “We don’t force Arabs out,” she said. “We pay good money for homes in bad condition.” In any case, the settlers say, they answer to a higher authority. Says Rabbi Shlomo Aviner: “We are told [by the Bible] to settle the Land of Israel everywhere, so most certainly in the Old City.”

Israeli officials know that the move on the Muslim Quarter could lead to violence and even revive the Palestinian uprising. That, in turn, could endanger the Middle East peace talks, which barely inched forward in Moscow last week. But the government is ambivalent about the peace process anyway. And in the Muslim Quarter, it seems to be ready for trouble. Police and army units inside the walls built by Suleiman the Magnificent have been beefed up, and the quarter is heavily patrolled by agents of Shin Bet, Israel’s security police. Arabs say their visitors are often searched. Meanwhile, several Jews have been stabbed in the Muslim Quarter. If the quarter explodes, the blast could be felt for thousands of miles.

Photo: ‘The Arabs will understand’: Guarding seized property in the Silwan neighborhood (ANTHONY RAY-JB PICTURES)

Map: Divided City: The Israeli influx is greatest in sensitive areas near the mosque (FRANK O’CONNELL)

Subject Terms: JERUSALEM – Description & travel