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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)
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Adnan Husseini, the Jerusalem director of the Waqf, the Islamic land trust that has authority over the al-Aqsa mosque complex, traces his Palestinian family's Jerusalem roots back 800 years. His office overlooks the olive grove and cypress stands of the Haram al-Sharif, his centuries-old walls rising into vaulted ceilings above his cluttered desk.
"They have failed to control the city," he said. "And they will never succeed."
Husseini, a 59-year-old engineer wearing gold-rim half-glasses and a cardigan, said Jewish settlers with help from the Israeli government are "destroying the scale of the city" by pushing large symbolic projects in the Muslim Quarter and in contested religious areas.
He cited the Flowers Gate synagogue, which requires several more layers of approval, and the project to build a wider ramp from the Western Wall plaza to the Mugrabi Gate, the entrance to the mosque complex used by Israeli soldiers and tourists. Walls dating to the 7th-century Umayyad rule are threatened by the work, and Muslim concern prompted last week's protests.
"They want to create a new situation, a new conflict," Husseini said. "Jerusalem is in danger."
From the Old City ramparts above the Flowers Gate project, Jon Seligman, Jerusalem director of the Israel Antiquities Authority, looked toward a horizon spiked with spires and minarets. The only Jewish buildings that once appeared there were a pair of synagogues, destroyed by Jordan during its nearly two-decade reign.
"Whether a Jewish presence on the skyline is appropriate is something that can be legitimately raised," said Seligman, referring to the Flowers Gate synagogue. "It is something that is present for all other major religions here except Judaism."
More than half of Seligman's budget comes from construction projects that require preliminary excavations, which at the Flowers Gate site have revealed the thick stone walls of a 600-year-old Arab neighborhood. Plans call for the synagogue to be built above it.
The Holy Basin
Just outside the Old City walls, the beige limestone hillside dips sharply to the Kidron Valley floor. Homes with arched windows and iron balconies are packed tightly along narrow streets, where Jewish settler groups have been buying Palestinian property and moving in behind high fences and guard towers.
But the hillside expanses of Jewish and Muslim cemeteries, strips of parkland and the remnants of ancient stone walls have given Jewish settler groups in the Holy Basin more to work with than in the cramped confines of the Old City -- open land and an abundance of archaeological sites useful in promoting the historic Jewish claim to the area.
Stone steps 2,000 years old rise from the Siloam Pool, climbing into a tunnel toward the Western Wall hundreds of feet above. Among the few people who have seen the recently discovered steps is David Beeri, a spry 53-year-old whose organization is financing the excavation.
"Every step is important," said Beeri, founder of Elad, a private organization that moves Jewish settlers into the Holy Basin, oversees its main archaeological sites and finances new digs. "Every step is a story."
