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The Silwan/Bustan Drama - two new articles from the Hebrew press

Earlier this week I blogged about Mayor Barkat's efforts to implement a grandiose settler-friendly development scheme in the Bustan area of Silwan (which Barkat calls the "Kings' Garden").  Today there are two important pieces in the Hebrew-language press today on Silwan/Bustan drama.

Neither a Garden nor a King
March 5, Yedioth Ahronoth (p. B3) by Nahum Barnea
(Translation by Israel News Today)

The Jerusalem municipality calls this place by the festive name "The King's Garden," despite the fact that there is nothing regal about it for the time being, and there is also no garden in it.  The narrow riverbed of Nahal Kidron was paved by black and yellow interlocking paving blocks, a few stone benches and a small parking lot were built, and [the builders] went elsewhere.

White vans, the ones that drive Arab workers into Israel, park along the riverbed.  The village Silwan, which is crossed by the King's Garden, is supported by this economic branch.  Many workers of the municipal sanitation department, waste disposal workers, also live here.  They clean up the entire city, but not their own village.  Heaps of trash decorate the King's Garden, and children run between them.  To their right is the slope of the City of David: a settler NPO [non-profit organization] invests many millions in excavations in the heart of the mountain.  The tool is archeology.  The objective is political.  Opposite this, residential houses crowd together gracelessly.  Some were built illegally.  Others sprouted stories illegally.  There is no king in the King's Garden, no law and no judge, either for Arabs or for Jews.

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat announced this week that he intended to demolish 40 houses of Arabs that were built illegally along the riverbed.  His announcement worried many people, both in Israel and around the world.  This is all we need now--a new Intifada.  Netanyahu phoned Barkat and asked him to back down.  Barkat agreed.

Barkat has earned honestly all suspicions against him until today, but in this case, it is not certain that he could have acted differently.  In the heart of the neighborhood, a bit above the riverbed, stands Beit Yehonatan, an eight-storey residential building that was built illegally.  The court has instructed that the eight families living in it be evicted, and the house sealed up.  Barkat has carried out all possible maneuvers to avoid the implementation of the order.  He knows that the eviction will have a heavy political price.  He will lose his most loyal supporters in a single day.

In his distress, he did what any politician would do: he brought a goat into the house [note: this is a reference to a story about a man complaining to a Rabbi that his house is too small; the rabbi tells the man to move his goats into his house.  When the man complains that the house is too crowded, the rabbi tells him to remove the goats, so the man will now feel that the house is much bigger, even though it is exactly the same size as it was at the start].  When State Attorney Moshe Lador demanded adamantly that he seal up the Jewish house, Barkat asked him what to do with the 40 Arab houses.  If the law is being enforced, it should be enforced all the way.

Just as the goat entered, so it left: the 40 Arab houses that were not demolished have caused people to forget the Jewish house that was not sealed up.  Silwan continued to live its life, the Arabs in a state of crowding, poverty and squalor, the Jews under heavy security funded by the state.

Forty-three years have passed since the start of the occupation, and the State of Israel has still not decided how to treat East Jerusalem.  Slightly over a year ago, then-prime minister Ehud Olmert offered Silwan, along with other peripheral neighborhoods, to Abu Mazen.  When Netanyahu reaches the discussion on the issue of Jerusalem, in proximity talks or long-distance talks, he will face the same dilemma.  If Silwan were really part of the State of Israel, it would look different, not like a Third World village; if it were part of the State of Israel, the settlers would not invest so much in it and would not hang huge flags on the houses they purchased; if it were part of the State of Israel, the state would not invest tens of millions in funding security for the Jewish settlers.  In other neighborhoods in the city, Arabs and Jews live together, without joy and without security.  But Silwan is not part of the State of Israel.
 
The Vanished Garden
March 5, Ma'ariv (p. B14) by Shalom Yerushalmi
Translation by Israel News Today

Moussa Ouda stands in the middle of his improvised courtyard,  holding papers with stamps from the Jordanian government, which he shows like a kushan [certificate of registration of real estate, from Turkish law--INT] for Building No. 59 in the heart of the Al Bustan (King's Garden) neighborhood in Silwan, where he says that he has been living since 1952. Ouda is upset and annoyed. In his other hand, he holds a large key tied to a green ribbon. These two symbolic items are enough to draw in dozens of television photographers and reporters from all over the world, who came last Tuesday in order to cover Mayor Nir Barkat's rehabilitation plan for the city.

"The residents of Al Bustan will bury themselves beneath their homes together with their children, but will not be expelled," read the titles of the pamphlets that the residents distributed to reporters beforehand. Ouda, too, speaks harshly, occasionally cursing the mayor and the entire world. When he is asked to identify himself, he throws ten names, his own and those of his ancestors, out into the air in order to show that he has been on this land for many generations, "even before you came to my country in 1967."

At home, he has a pile of eviction notices and demolition orders and summonses to court and fines that have driven him only out of his mind. Sometimes, the municipality hangs the notices under the name "Unknown," with the house number, on the green iron gate. This case has been inflaming people in the village and leading the inhabitants of Al Bustan to make infuriating statements. "The Nazis also expelled people from their homes like this in Europe," says Abu Snein el-Karim, garbling history. "To them you were numbers, not human beings. Just like us."

Ouda's inner courtyard integrates very well with the planned trash dump of Silwan. One side is blocked by a heavy canvas curtain that someone removed from a restaurant by the name of Café Kumkum. On the other side, he constructed a wall of stones and concrete, and installed bathrooms adjacent to it. A broken iron bench and a fig tree that has seen better days are also there. After many months during which I have walked around Silwan and in Wadi al-Bustan, I reach the conclusion that one of the most beautiful places in the world contains the world's ugliest neighborhood with the most bitter people in the universe. Barkat's pretty plans have only added to the general ire instead of the opposite.

Barkat Is Convinced

Barkat himself also prepared public-relations material: elegant booklets on thick glossy paper under the title "Launching the King's Garden Plan," with a CD containing a slide show of the grandiose plan that he has built for the area. King's Garden is the central finger that cuts through Silwan. Close to a hundred homes and skeletons of homes, most of them illegal, have been built inside the wadi. Barkat wants to demolish several dozen such homes and move the residents to the other end of the street, where he will place them in high-rise buildings. Barkat promises that shops, restaurants, artists' workshops and stalls will be built, as befits an attractive tourist spot, and that millions of tourists will visit them.

On the land where the homes are to be evacuated, Barkat wishes to construct a large public park, once the land has been expropriated from its owners, the residents. Barkat is convinced that the residents will agree to the revolution that he has started in their lives and, instead of continuing to live in half-demolished homes, ruins, shacks and goat sheds, and all under the constant threat of eviction, they will move to the well-organized, commercial neighborhood that he has planned for them.

In his mind's eye, Barkat has always seen the Silwan neighborhood as a little Tuscany in the heart of Jerusalem, even if today he is willing to content himself with a place that resembles the thriving Abu Ghosh. In the eyes of the residents, it is, of course, a nightmare. Moussa Ouda, for example, asks how they will take him and his family and force them all upon his brother across the street, once he adds another storey to his home.

Barkat's pamphlet is euphemistic. Anyone who took it into his hands would think that this was a marketing plan for a new neighborhood between Raanana and Kfar Saba, and not the demolition of dozens of homes and the uprooting of residents in the most volatile area in the world. It contains many colorful aerial photographs, impressive sketches done by computer and drawings that make you want to want to get up and demolish your home with your own hands. The language is polished, too. The neighborhood will be "organized" and the inhabitants "shifted" to empty land. King's Garden, according to Barkat's booklet, lies precisely at the point that is called "the gate of Paradise," where the Kidron stream meets the Valley of Ben Hinnom. The garden will one day be restored to its heyday, and those who come here at that time will feel exactly as King Solomon did when he wrote the Book of Ecclesiastes among the perfumed gardens and the roses that are mentioned in the Song of Songs.

There Is No Confidence in the Municipality

The inhabitants of Al Bustan whom I spoke with have no idea where this pastoral, naïve plan came from. Decades under Israeli rule have dried up every drop of confidence that they ever had in the municipality. In order for them to agree to move one shack, dozens of layers of fear and hatred must be peeled from them, and even then they will be exposed to the influence of left-wing organizations on the one hand and members of the Islamic movement on the other, who will not let them move. The fundamentalist influence can be seen even now in every alleyway in the neighborhood. One of the many graffiti sketches depicts a weeping eye with the el-Aksa Mosque at its center. Recently, stickers showing two fingers in the V-for-victory sign were placed on the doors of the houses. "The voice of the Koran shall be heard in every home, and this shall be resistance to the bulldozers of the occupation," the caption reads.

As far as the Palestinian Authority is concerned, the neighborhood is actually occupied territory, and Israel has no right to do anything there. If the municipality insists nevertheless, it can carry out renovations, but it may not move the inhabitants from their illegally-constructed houses or even grant them permits. Regarding the park, which involves land expropriation, there is nothing to say. The inhabitants are afraid that the park will be handed over immediately to the management of the settlers from the Elad organization, which already has one-third of the neighborhood's houses in its possession and runs the archaeological park in the City of David. Two years ago, they hired an architect and drew up a plan on the basis of the existing houses. They thought it would work. "That's true, but the district committee threw them down the stairs," says Barkat.

"Barkat is using extortion methods," complains Meir Margalit, a member of the municipal council from Meretz and a member of the committee against house demolitions. "He comes and offers the people a solution, but if they won't accept it, their homes will be demolished. That's not the way to negotiate. He's using the carrot-and-stick method, but in the end, we'll be left with just the stick. If he wants to prove his good intentions, let him allow the residents to build houses and give them permits. That way, he'll rebuild trust, and after that, he can ask them to move. It's the only way."

Daoud Siyam, a taxi driver who lives in the neighborhood, has taken a lesson from the government's behavior toward the settlers who were evacuated from Gush Katif. "Look what happened to them," he says sympathetically. "They threw them out of their homes and afterwards did nothing for them, so why should they care about us? Barkat doesn't want to build. He wants to destroy. He wants to bring settlers here to replace us. Look at Beit Yehonatan. Believe me, I wouldn't mind if people like you came to live here. We'd live together, Jews and Arabs, like in Abu Tor. But they're bringing in gangs. These people only want to drive us out, to make trouble. Look at how you look to the world. Is that really worth it to you?" he asks, spreading out his hands.

Setting the Ground on Fire

Last Tuesday afternoon, Barkat held a press conference, during which he exhibited his plan. In any other place in the world, where no war or terrible natural disaster has taken place, he would have been content with a medium-size room in order to host the media. Jerusalem is another world. Barkat had to prepare the spacious auditorium of the city council for dozens of television crews and journalists who came to hear what he wanted to do.

Downstairs, members of Peace Now were already waiting with the well-known slogans and the familiar rivalries with the Jerusalem environment. "Two states for two peoples. Silwan is not for settlers," the demonstrators shouted. "Go to hell. The gentiles are giving you money," answered the passersby who came to pay their municipal taxes.

After the press conference, I go to see Barkat. There is something misleading about the mayor of Jerusalem. One cannot help but admire his stubbornness, determination, and the hard work that he has been doing day and night for nearly an entire year on the King's Garden project. On the other hand, it is hard not to be amazed at the self-confidence that he demonstrates when he comes to demolish dozens of illegally-constructed homes in the Palestinian neighborhood, five hundred meters from the Temple Mount. Even Teddy Kollek, the legendary mayor of Jerusalem, did not dare to deal with the illegal construction in the Holy Basin. He claimed that the matter was too sensitive. Kollek believed, perhaps correctly, that if he turned a blind eye to what was happening in the Arab neighborhoods, he would be able to build Jewish neighborhoods, such as Gilo and Armon Hanatziv, across the 1967 lines.

Barkat looks pleased. The press conference went well. "You're setting the ground on fire," I tell him. He gets angry. "What's the alternative? That they keep on living in illegally-constructed homes? In homes that aren't fit for human habitation?" "The whole morning that I walked around Silwan, I didn't find a single person who supports your plan," I told him.

Barkat calls to Itai Tzohar, a young project manager who is behind the plan. Tzohar says that he sat for months with the inhabitants of Wadi Al-Bustan after he went from house to house and got sweeping agreement for his plan. He has a thick book that he wrote with Yosef Jabrin, an architect who, he says, works with the residents. Entire pages are devoted to each family. "We come to the resident and tell him: now your home is worth minus two hundred thousand dollars. You have no permit. You're illegal. In a little while, you'll have a home that's worth a million dollars. They get it," Tzohar says.

Q. Who will fund the new homes for the residents, the permits, the levies?
Barkat: "They will. Maybe there will be philanthropic foundations that will assist them. They don't deserve a reward for building illegally.  In the end, they'll invest the money. The deal is worthwhile for them."

I asked to speak with one of the dozens of residents who agreed to Barkat's plan, even anonymously. Tzohar promised to connect me with someone, but he did not keep his promise despite all my reminders.

Waiting for the Messiah

On Tuesday morning, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu poured cold water on Barkat's plan. The telephone call from the Prime Minister's Bureau came after the plan had been reported for the first time in Zeman Yerushalayim [a local weekly--INT] and later on various Internet sites. Netanyahu, who never stops talking about construction in united Jerusalem, learned the hard way that there is an authority stronger than himself in the world. "The Americans are worried. Maybe we can soften the plan. Don't run so fast," he said. The mayor agreed unhappily, and was perhaps glad that someone had stopped the plan, which could not be carried out in the current situation. Barkat decided to postpone the plan and not to bring it to the local planning committee for approval, and thus aroused the ire of the right-wing members of the municipality.

And so it will go, apparently for many years, in Silwan: the inhabitants will continue to live in garbage; the municipality will continue to give out fruitless eviction orders and waste millions on empty plans; the Americans will get angry; and the plan to reconstruct the biblical garden and the charming stream that flows through it will wait for the Messianic Era, when King Solomon will rise from the grave.