Tag: Jerusalem

To view original article, published in the Jerusalem Post on the 8th May, click here

Ma’aleh Adumim Mayor Benny Kashriel doesn’t plan to rest on the country’s laurels on its 60th Independence Day. Instead – in a gesture more fitting of settler youth – he is heading to a West Bank hilltop with a protest tent.

Top on his mind is the lack of construction permits, rather than the country’s achievements, the head of the second-largest settlement city told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.

So he intends to spend the day fighting for his community’s future by holding office hours under a tent he will set up on the contested hilltop in what is known as E- 1, a mostly empty area of 11.9 square kilometers located within the city’s municipal boundaries but on the opposite side of the highway from its developed sections.

Palestinians and the US have long opposed construction in that hilltop area, saying it would disrupt the contiguity of a future Palestinian state.

E-1 is bordered by Jerusalem’s French Hill neighborhood to the west, Abu Dis to the southwest, Kedar to the south, the rest of Ma’aleh Adumim to the east and Almon to the north.

Pledges by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and other officials that Ma’aleh Adumim is an integral part of Israel have not assuaged Kashriel’s fear that American policy and pressure will prevail in the end.

‘On the day that Israel is celebrating its independence, we want to remind people that our independence is total and we are not under the policy of [US Secretary of State Condoleezza] Rice,’ he said. ‘We want to show that E-1 is part of Ma’aleh Adumim,’ Continued growth of Ma’aleh Adumim can only happen there, he said. The government’s refusal to allow construction there will choke the city, Kashriel said.

On Hanukka, he shied away from a protest march held in E-1 by activists and city residents who tried but failed to establish an unauthorized outpost there.

But as the months dragged on with no resolution in sight, Kashriel, who previously relied on lobbying, has now opened a new phase of his campaign for E-1, also known as Mevaseret Adumim.

Moves to open a new Judea and Samaria Police Headquarters on the site have been more successful. The opening of the already-completed station was postponed last month, but the police have been slowly moving in and the station is expected to be operational within a few weeks.

To see original article published in Haaretz, 28th April 2008, click here

Based on an agreement signed with former police commissioner Moshe Karadi, right-wing settlers will take up residence in a group of buildings in Jerusalem’s predominantly Arab neighborhood Ras al-Amud in the next few days. The building had hitherto served as the Samaria and Judea District Police headquarters.

The buildings are slated to become the nucleus of a new Jewish neighborhood in the so-called Holy Basin area, the fate of which is supposed to be decided in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

Police officials said yesterday that work began before Pesach on vacating the place, and that in the coming days they will finish moving the offices to a new facility built in controversial Area E1, which connects Jerusalem with Ma’aleh Adumim.

Concurrently, right-wing settler groups filed a request with the Jerusalem Planning and Construction Committee a few days ago to approve construction of a new neighborhood of 110 housing units on the vacated site.

The request states that the new neighborhood, Ma’aleh David, is intended to link up with the Ma’aleh Zeitim neighborhood, which was built in the heart of Ras al-Amud by tycoon Irving Moskowitz, with the encouragement of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert while he was mayor of Jerusalem.

In all, the neighborhoods of Ma’aleh David and Ma’aleh Zeitim are projected to house around 250 Jewish families in an area with 14,000 Arab residents.

Nadav Shragai, writing in Haaretz on January 8, reported that the right-wing groups active in “redeeming Jerusalem” by buying up Arab land were negotiating with the Bukharan community committee to purchase the land and building that housed the police’s Samaria and Judea District headquarters, which were acquired by the committee during Ottoman rule.

Noga Ben David, one of the leaders of the community, declined yesterday to discuss whether right-wing settler groups are behind the deal, saying he prefers to remain silent until the police vacate the premises.

Under the contract the police signed with the Bukharan community in July 2005, a copy of which was obtained by Haaretz, the community committee undertakes to apply to the Civil Administration and arrange for 14 dunams of land to be allocated in Area E1 for building a replacement building for the police. The committee undertook to plan the replacement building and surrounding development at its own expense.

This barter arrangement allowed the police to finance the new headquarters while bypassing the Budget Law.

The Palestinian Authority’s chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, told Haaretz yesterday that allowing right-wing settler groups to move into the old police station in Ras Al-Amud, as the nucleus for a new neighborhood, would undermine the peace talks.

As for the new police station in E1, strong American objections have kept Israeli governments in recent years from implementing the E1 plan, which effectively envisions annexing to Jerusalem a wide swath of land on the eastern side of the Green Line.

The PA has persuaded the Americans that Israeli construction in that area would slice the West Bank in two, making a contiguous Palestinian state impossible. The Americans have made it clear during the current round of peace talks that they are opposed to altering the status quo in Jerusalem.

For this reason, the inauguration of the new police station was postponed at the last minute on the eve of the last visit by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Erekat, who accompanied PA President Mahmoud Abbas on his visit to the United States last weekend, said that President Bush assured them he would object to any attempt to turn the Palestinian state into “Swiss cheese.”

The land on which the police station is located has a convoluted history: It was expropriated for “public purposes” by the Jordanian government, conquered by Israel in the Six-Day War, then legally handed over to the Israel Lands Administration, and finally given to the police – “for public purposes.”

Asked on what authority the police had handed over land it received from the ILA to an entity that designates it for residential construction in a sensitive area, the Public Security Ministry said: “At issue is an agreement that was signed with the Israel Lands Administration, the police and the Bukharan community’s endowment, whose rights to the land in Ras al-Amud were recognized by the court. In a circular agreement, the endowment undertook to build a new building for the district headquarters in return for the old headquarters.”

No response was received from the ILA before press time.

Original Ma’an report (click here)
Israeli police arrested Jeff Halper, the founder and coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) for attempting to prevent the destruction of a Palestinian house in the town of Anata, within the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem, on Wednesday morning.

He was detained at the Metsudat Adumim police headquarters for two hours before being released. He has not yet been charged with any criminal offence but has been told he may face criminal proceedings.

“It’s not clear if they’re going to press charges,” Halper told Ma’an after his release, adding that he may be facing a jail sentence if charged. “I’ve run out of hours of community service so they’ll have to put me in jail but I doubt that it’ll happen.”

Israeli police removed the furniture from the Hamdan family home in Anata before Israeli bulldozers moved in and leveled the house, an ICAHD spokesperson said.

Meir Margalit, ICAHD field coordinator, appealed to a Jerusalem municipal court on Wednesday for a stop demolition order. The appeal was rejected, ICAHD said.

The house that was home to 12 members of the Hamdan family, had been previously demolished in December 2005, and was rebuilt by international volunteers last summer as an act of civil disobedience against the policy of house demolitions.

“Ending house demolitions is in the first phase of the Road Map. This [house demolitions] is just spitting in the face of the Quartet. We’re supposed to believe there’s a peace process but the occupation are doing everything they can on the ground – building the separation wall, building settler roads and house demolitions,” Halper said.

“The peace process is a sham. Israel doesn’t even pretend they are not doing any of these things. This shows the whole impotence of the peace process,” he added.

ICAHD says that 88% of land in Jerusalem is not zoned for Palestinian construction. As a result, building permits are nearly impossible to obtain, and houses are routinely demolished on this pretext.

28 homes have been demolished in Jerusalem since the beginning of 2008, ICAHD says.

For the original article click
Ma’an – Israeli authorities have given new directive to border police operating along the Israeli separation wall surrounding Jerusalem enabling them to open fire directly on Palestinians who try to demonstrate near the barrier, the Israeli daily Maariv reported on Wednesday.

According to the new rule, sniping is forbidden if there are Israeli or foreign citizens amongst demonstrators.