JERUSALEM — The polished Jerusalem stone of the Ma’ale Hazeitim apartment block gleams. It is almost blinding on a sunny day. The stark white is offset by the drab, exhaust-stained structures of the Arab neighborhood surrounding it.
On April 2, when several Jewish families moved into this shiny new apartment block in the Ras al-Amud neighborhood, built on the Arab-dominated Mount of Olives, they raised the hackles of both the Israeli left and the U.S. government.
The Bush administration has told Jerusalem that the neighborhood, which is projected one day to have more than 130 housing units, could make the division of Jerusalem nearly impossible, complicating any future peace agreement with the Palestinians.
Indeed, that’s exactly the point, the settlement’s backers say.
The only aspect of the construction that both sides agree on is that it helps block the division of the city.
The father of the project, Arieh King, a 30-year-old former kibbutznik, points out the strategic importance of the site.
For one thing, the mount provides an almost unparalleled view of the Old City. But more than that, “it’s the geographical point that connects the Israeli settlement around the Old City,” King says. “If we create a strong enough presence here, it makes the division of the city nearly impossible.”
In addition, the development, which the Jerusalem municipality considers legal, would scuttle plans for an east-west corridor leading from Arab areas to the Temple Mount, as envisioned in a sample peace plan written in the mid-1990s by former Israeli Cabinet Minister Yossi Beilin and now-Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas.
“This corridor would allow the Arabs to enter freely without passing any checkpoint or Jewish community all the way from Jordan,” King says. “It’s worth our every effort and investment to block the plan.”
The Ras al-Amud settlement, which King helped found more than five years ago, is set back on a hill adjacent to the Mount of Olives, which, from the austere neighborhood, appears almost to be paved with headstones.
A Jewish neighborhood in the midst of an Arab area indeed sticks out, said Abu Yunis, who owns a shwarma restaurant around the corner.
Yet, he notes, “If there will be peace, then all this will not matter. We’ll live perfectly well side by side.”
Yunis is an entrepreneur who believes that “new business is good business.” Even Orthodox Jews can eat at his restaurant, he boasts, pointing out a framed certificate proving that his establishment is kosher.
If the Jewish residents of Ras al-Amud want to live in peace, he says, “we will welcome them with open arms.”
But, he asks, “What do they want living in a community of 20,000 Arabs?”
The Arab residents of Ras al-Amud seem more interested in American foreign policy than in developments in their own neighborhood.
“That Bush is not a smart man,” Yunis says of the American president. “He waged war and now has incensed the entire Arab people.”
His cooks nod their heads in agreement.
For his part, King is confident that the Jewish neighborhood will be good for the Arab residents, few of whom participated in recent Peace Now protests at the site. Development would keep them within the Jerusalem municipality in any future peace plan, King says.
Important it may be, but those who believe that Israel must create the conditions for future peace with the Palestinians consider it pure folly.