New Palestinian Construction Spreads Over an Archaeological Site

Israel's resolution of the drainage problem brought in its wake a wave of new, illegal construction by Palestinians on the site. While Palestinian Arab residents in Jerusalem can obtain building permits like the city's Jewish residents, the eastern part of Jerusalem has been afflicted with large-scale construction often undertaken without any building license.⁴ This construction often occurs on land zoned for public use (i.e., clinics, or parks or, as in this case, an archeological site). In response to the illegal construction in the City of David, the Jerusalem municipality issued demolition orders for 88 structures. Testifying a year ago at the Knesset, the director general of the Israel Antiquities Authority, Joshua Dorfman, estimated that the illegal construction did significant and sometimes irrever sible damage to the antiquities at the site. However, only a number of isolated demolitions were carried out.  The Jerusalem municipality is insisting today on carrying out these orders, but given the sensitivity of the issue and international criticism, it intends to offer the delinquent residents generous compensation that includes land at an alternative site in the city. The residents, supported by ideological groups and the Palestinian Authority, have opposed this offer and are engaged in a campaign of incitement against the state's authorities and their attempts to enforce the law. However, after extensive deliberations, the municipal planning committee in early March turned down a plan submitted by the residents to "whitewash" the illegal construction at the site.  As Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat explained, "This is one of the most strategic sites in the city, on an international level, which must be an open public area..I would like to see what [New York Mayor Michael] Bloomberg would say about illegal building in Central Park. Would he give up Central Park because there is illegal building there?"⁵

The Jewish Return to the City of David

An additional issue that has served as a pretext for attacks on is renewed Jewish residency in the City of David itself. Scores of Jewish families now live in this area in houses legally purchased at great cost from former Arab residents. No one forced Arab owners to sell properties to Jews and earn substantial profits. The sales were made by individuals acting of their own free will and in many cases were even documented on video, in order to refute the litany of complaints that were subsequently made by politically motivated groups.    In fact renewed Jewish settlement in the City of David rests on empirical Jewish historic, religious, and cultural ties to the area. Relations between the Jewish and Palestinian residents of the neighborhood are reasonably warm as long as political elements remain uninvolved and do not incite the Palestinian residents. Police sources testify that ever since the Jews began moving into the area, crime and nationalist incidents there have declined sharply.

The EU's Problematic Policy Shift on Jerusalem

The recent EU report was not issued in a diplomatic vacuum. Rather, it is the latest manifestation of a problematic shift in EU policy on Jerusalem that began in 1999. The German ambassador to Israel at the time, whose country served as rotating President of the EU, proposed re-dividing Jerusalem by reviving UN Resolution 181 of 1947, that had been drafted before Israelwas invaded by the neighboring Arab states in the 1948 war of independence. In fact, Resolution 181 had not proposed that Jerusalem be divided, but rather that it should be internationalized, becoming a corpus separatum - a proposal declared by Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, to be "null and void."⁶ The diplomatic resurrection of the idea of denying Israeli sovereignty over its united capital also energized the longstanding Palestinian denial of any Jewish connection to Jerusalem . Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qurie stated at the time in the official Palestinian Authority newspaper Al- Ayam, "The (EU's) letter asserts that Jerusalem in both of its parts - the Western and the Eastern - is a land under occupation."⁷

Israeli Rights in Jerusalem

According to the new EU document, "The EU policy on Jerusalem is based on the principles set out in UN Security Council Resolution 242." However, Resolution 242, drafted in the aftermath of 's defensive Six-Day War in June 1967 and unanimously approved by the Security Council on November 22, 1967, does not mention Jerusalem at all. Moreover, the operative clauses of the resolution never insisted on total withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines, but only on withdrawal from "territories" to "secure and recognized boundaries." The ambassador to the United Nations in 1967, Arthur Goldberg, wrote retrospectively: "I never described Jerusalem as an occupied area..Resolution 242 does not refer to Jerusalem in any way whatsoever, and this omission was deliberate."⁸ In this context, it should be recalled that between 1948 and 1967 during the period of Jordanian rule in Jerusalem , in contravention of its international legal obligations, refused to allow Jews access to the Western Wall, the Mount of Olives , and additional places sacred to Jews under its control. Over 50 synagogues in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City were either destroyed or desecrated, and hundreds of tombstones in the most important Jewish cemetery in the world on the Mount of Olives were desecrated and smashed. The reunification of Jerusalem by in June 1967 restored freedom of religion and worship to all residents of the city - Jews, Muslims and Christians alike. The European Union report on Jerusalem also ignores the historical progression of Jewish rights and seniority in the city. Jerusalem has had a Jewish majority for the last 150 years - at least since 1864. 's position in Jerusalem under international law derives from the Palestine Mandate, where the League of Nations , the repository of international legitimacy prior to the establishment of the United Nations, recognized "the historical tie between the Jewish people and Palestine ," and called "for the establi shment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine ." The League of Nations did not distinguish between Jewish rights in Jerusalem and their rights in other areas of Palestine . Israel's Knesset established Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel in 1950. The Armistice Agreement between and , signed a year earlier, did not fix the final boundaries between the parties, but only the lines of military separation at the close of the 1948 war. At the demand of the Arab side, the armistice agreement included a clause that stipulated that nothing in this agreement would predetermine the rights of any party with regard to the final resolution of the outstanding issues through peaceful means. In other words, upon the outbreak of the Six-Day War, the 1967 armistice lines enjoyed no legal or diplomatic status. On June 5, 1967, Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol sent a message to 's King Hussein saying that would not attack unless it initiated hostilities. Nevertheless, launched an attack on along the municipal boundary line in Jerusalem . With the liberation of the Old City of Jerusalem in the course of the Six-Day Wa r, 's Knesset applied Israeli law, jurisdiction, and authority to the eastern part of the city.  At the same time, in a concession unprecedented in modern international diplomatic history that has never been properly recognized, agreed to allow the Muslim Waqf to manage the Temple Mount area, with a view toward preventing inter-religious conflict at one of the world's most sensitive sites. By doing so, underscored its intention to assure freedom of access to members of all faiths at all of the holy sites in Jerusalem .

 Notes

1. Rory McCarthy, " Annexing East Jerusalem , Says EU," Guardian (), 7 March 2009.