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)

The story that brought Beeri to this place began before his birth. His father was saved from a firing-squad pit at Auschwitz by a German officer he had befriended -- giving his future son "a mission" to work on behalf of Jews.

Beeri first saw the City of David in the 1980s as a soldier disguised as an Arab in an army undercover unit. After the first Palestinian uprising ended with the 1993 Oslo accords, he moved his wife and six children into a hillside house he said he bought from a Palestinian family through a third party.

Beeri pointed to large holes at the edges of the steps that revealed a musty tunnel beneath. Israeli archaeologists have discovered food-storage jars and coins dating to the 1st-century Jewish rebellion against the Romans. According to Roman histories, soldiers pulled escaping Jewish rebels from a tunnel, slaying them with swords. Beeri believes this is the place it happened.

"The Romans are no longer here, but we have come back," he said.

Beeri's organization, Elad, works with the National Parks Protection Authority, the Jerusalem municipality and the Jewish National Fund, an agency that controls large tracts of land in the Holy Basin purchased in the 1920s by Baron Edmond James de Rothschild. The Klugman Commission said government agencies gave Elad privileged access to at least two dozen houses in the area, including some seized from Palestinians under the absentee-property law Israel imposed after the 1948 war.

Elad says it and its partners control more than 55 percent of the Holy Basin. The organization owns the City of David visitors center, the entrance to some of Jerusalem's most important archaeological sites. Elad officials say 250,000 visitors came to the center last year -- a tenfold increase from 2001.

Beeri's house is on a path paved with cut stones and lined with the same street signs seen in the city's western neighborhoods. Israeli critics say the intention is to make the neighborhood indistinguishable from West Jerusalem.

"This area poses enormous challenges for the Palestinian national movement," said Meir Margalit, a Jew and former Jerusalem councilman now with the nonprofit Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. "The biggest problem here is temptation. The settlers come with suitcases full of cash and say, 'Take it.' "

Elad sometimes offers three times the market rate for homes near important archaeological sites, Beeri said. "We must do this in a legal way on the free market. And in doing so, we think we can change the future of this part of Jerusalem."

Over the years, several dozen Jewish families have moved into homes that Elad has purchased from Palestinians, some of whom faced demolition orders from the Jerusalem city government for building or expanding without proper permits.

"At times we are pushed to despair," said Fakhri Abu Diab, 44, a Palestinian who heads a homeowners group in the area along the Kidron Valley floor. His house, set in a courtyard of lemon and olive trees, sage and wild thyme, is among 88 in the area slated for demolition to make way for an Israeli national park.

The demolition orders were frozen two years ago, amid protest. But they have not been lifted, and Abu Diab and his neighbors continue to pay fines for building without permits. Margalit, the former Jerusalem councilman, said only about 120 permits were granted in East Jerusalem last year.

That is one-tenth the number needed to accommodate growth, Israeli critics say. They contend the dearth drives Palestinians to look elsewhere for room to raise families. Just up the hill, Beeri is adding a new floor and more rooms to his house.

"A human being is at the end only a human being, and there is only so much he can take," said Abu Diab, the Palestinian, who grew up swimming in the Siloam Pool, where the Bible says Jesus cured a blind man, now behind locked gates controlled by Elad and the park service. "But the majority of us remain steadfast."

Most Palestinians have resisted offers to sell their homes, facing deadly reprisals if they accept. But settler leaders said two recent developments have made it easier for Jews to acquire Palestinian property.

The international aid boycott of the Palestinian Authority imposed after Hamas's election a year ago has ravaged the economy in the territories, prompting more Palestinians in East Jerusalem to sell their land out of financial necessity. In addition, they said, the 24-foot-high wall Israel is building around Jerusalem has nearly sealed the city off from the West Bank, home to armed Palestinian groups opposed to selling property to settlers, offering a sense of protection for those who do sell.

But the threat has not disappeared. In April, a Palestinian father of eight, Mohammed Abu al-Hawa, sold his apartment building in the A-Tur neighborhood of the Mount of Olives, which lies on Israel's side of the wall. Days later his body was found tortured and burned near Jericho. The purchase marked the first Jewish foothold in the neighborhood, which has a vivid view of the Temple Mount stretching across the ridgeline to the west.