Jewish Inroads in Muslim Quarter

Israeli Arabs in Jerusalem's Old City pass the entrance of a Jewish settlement in the Muslim Quarter. The Israeli government took control of the quarter nearly four decades ago. (By Ilan Mizrahi For The Washington Post)

That partnership has been revived in pursuit of identical goals. The same settler groups are working now in tandem with the government as they purchase Palestinian property at a time of deep recession in the occupied territories, build new housing and promote the Jewish historical claim to the Old City and Holy Basin. The Israeli government plans to spend $106 million in the area on housing development, tourist centers and historic renovation near contested religious sites through 2013 -- money that began flowing last year.

"The conflict is being reduced to its volcanic core," said Daniel Seidemann, a Jerusalem lawyer and critic of Israel's land-use policy in the city.

The Old City

---

A short walk along sloping alleys from the Flowers Gate compound, the Via Dolorosa joins al-Wad Street, forming the crossroads of three faiths.

On any Friday afternoon, families of ultra-Orthodox Jews stroll among Muslim men, each heading toward the plateau that Jews know as the Temple Mount and Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary. Christian pilgrims walk among them tracing Jesus's final steps, monitored by some of the 400 closed-circuit Israeli police cameras that continuously watch over the Old City.

Along the way, new signs depicting the sanctuary's 1,300-year-old al-Aqsa mosque hang above entrances to shawarma shops and boutiques. Funded by an Islamic organization in Israel as a response to new Jewish settlement activity, the signs emphasize the Islamic character of the quarter.

Ateret Cohanim, an organization named for the crown worn by members of the ancient Jewish priesthood, seeks to rebuild the Temple on the al-Aqsa site and is the primary settler group working within the Old City walls. To move Jews into the Muslim and Christian quarters, the group buys property in ways that have been challenged in court over the years. The 1992 Klugman Commission named it as a prime beneficiary of illegal government help.

"Our goal is to reestablish the Jewish presence in all of the Old City," said Ezra Waner, 26, a student at the Ateret Cohanim Yeshiva, which has existed periodically in the Muslim Quarter for 120 years. "Slowly, slowly, we want to bring the Jews back."

Jews control 75 to 80 buildings, homes and single stories of apartment complexes in the Muslim and Christian quarters, according to Israeli and Palestinian officials. Most of the properties, a small fraction of the total in those areas, are along routes to the Western Wall, where Jews pray at the base of the Temple Mount.

"Sometimes it takes 10 years of work just to buy one house," said Waner, who moved to Israel from South Africa 14 years ago. "And even then the Arabs will take everything out of it, even the electrical wiring, before turning it over."

The yeshiva entrance runs through a low, damp tunnel, just down al-Wad Street from the several-story building that Ariel Sharon, then Israel's infrastructure minister, bought in the 1980s. He purchased the place to create a symbolic Jewish presence in the Muslim Quarter, where Waner said 3,000 Jews lived during the British mandate that preceded Israel's founding in 1948.

Drifting out from behind locked gates, student prayers echo from crowded rooms where antique chandeliers provide young men the light to study the Torah and Talmud. During the 1936 Arab riots, the yeshiva's 100 or so students collected the Torah scrolls and fled. Waner said an Arab watchman held the keys, handing them to yeshiva officials after the 1967 war.

"Before the war there was no Muslim Quarter and no Jewish Quarter," Waner said in a book-lined room overflowing with young men. "We tell our stories. Soon all of them here will learn."