A summer of saving Jerusalem

Jerusalem is a complicated city. Wherever you look, whatever you try to touch, there’s complexity, controversy, intrigue. Take, for example, the simple question of archeological excavations in the Temple Mount area. What is the purpose of such excavations? Is it science? Is it politics? A survey conducted by a leftist organization, Emek Shaveh, just revealed that the answer to the question about archeology depends on one’s nationality and place of living. More than eighty percent of Israeli Jews believe that the digging is about science – to uncover the history of Jerusalem. But close to half of Israel’s Arabs (45%), and more than half of Jerusalem’s Arabs (57%), believe that the purpose of archeology in Jerusalem is to erase the Muslim past. In addition, many of them also believe that it is yet another way for Israel to strengthen its hold on Jerusalem.

It is essential to understand these suspicions when Israel is once again engaged in a debate about construction in Jerusalem. Prime Minister Netanyahu is under fire from the right because of his government’s decision to approve the construction of 600 new housing units for Arabs in Jerusalem. And, indeed, the decision is a sensitive one. The government had little choice but to approve it, because of a court’s instruction. Yet, looking at the map, it is impossible to deny the arguments made by right-wingers that the specific area of construction – the Arab neighborhood Beit Safafa, and the new neighborhood Givat Hamatos – would link the neighborhood to the West Bank city of Bethlehem, “creating a Palestinian corridor reaching into the heart of the capital,” as Minister Naftali Bennet of Habait Hayehudi said.

Netanyahu is facing a demand by the mayor of Jerusalem – a potential rival within Likud – and many of his most senior ministers, including the supposedly centrist minister of finance, Moshe Kahlon, to unfreeze the unofficial restrictions on building for Jews in that area. Just before leaving for Africa, in a response to the recent horrific terror attacks in the West Bank that left two families grieving, Netanyahu announced that Israel is going to build in Maale Adumim (West Bank) and in Ramot, Har Homah, and Pisgat Zeev (East Jerusalem). However, these 800 planned units seem less appealing to the advocates of one Jerusalem when they ponder the meaning of the 600 new houses in Beit Safafa. They call the government to add more housing where it matters (in their view): that is, in areas that will further complicate any future plan to divide the city and hand over any part of it to serve as the capital of a Palestinian State.

Should Israel build in areas that would complicate future attempts to divide the city? That is a question at the core of the Israeli political debate between right and left. The right says: division is undesirable – since Jerusalem is the heart of the Jewish people – and practically impossible – because it is one city whose division would suffocate it and ruin it economically – and we ought to make it even more so by uprooting any thoughts about such a possibility. The left says: demographic trends in Jerusalem are much like demographic trends elsewhere. If the city is not divided, the demographic reality could soon become a political reality. A third of the population is Arab. Potentially, this means that Jerusalem might someday elect an Arab Mayor. So members of the left are trying to convince Israelis that it is better to divide the city with a “Save Jewish Jerusalem” campaign. The goal of its creators is to convince the government to “unilaterally disengage from 28 villages in East Jerusalem.”

From archeology, to building, to cultural administration in Jerusalem – it's all knotty. Just a few days ago, dignitaries from Israel and the diaspora gathered to celebrate the naming of the Taube Family Campus – a grand plan that will make the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion campus in Jerusalem a much more noticeable presence in the city. Apparently, Reform Judaism does not scare “Jewish Jerusalem” that everybody is trying to “save” from something – or does it?

Yesterday, answering the court, the government of Israel asked for yet another extension, of yet another month (until August 4), to “exhaust” the effort to rearrange the prayers near the Western Wall. The government notified the court that it intends to immediately begin “taking the necessary actions” to make the third platform of prayer – that’s the platform in which non-Orthodox prayer is supposed to take place – ready for use. But it is not clear whether the government also intends to take the necessary action to complete all of the other plans for the Kotel that it approved a few months ago (note to readers and fellow writers: it is time to stop calling it the provisional-sounding “Kotel compromise”; the deal should be described with a term with more finality to it – “the Kotel government decision”).

On Thursday, the movements and organizations that were involved in negotiations over the Kotel decision on the progressive side plan to repeat their protest from last month and have an egalitarian service in the upper plaza of the Western Wall – where they are not supposed to be if and when the government decision is implemented. Last month, an ultra-Orthodox crowd surrounded the egalitarian worshipers, using whistles and insults to interrupt the proceedings. I assume such interruption is welcome. The egalitarian service is supposed to alert the government to the possibility of more bickering and more controversy if the decision to change the status quo in the Kotel is not implemented. This was essentially my advice to the Jewish leaders that were pleading with the PM to back his words and his government’s decisions with action (Don’t get me wrong: I don’t think anyone is following my advice). Here is one paragraph from my article from early June:

“Just imagine this scenario: a group of American, Canadian, and Israeli Jews coming to the Kotel – say 200 strong – and beginning to daven in such a way. The other Jews at the scene react with fury. The police get involved to prevent violence. Cameras click. Videos are posted. A PR disaster for Israel. Jewish worshipers at the Kotel humiliated by other Jews, dragged by the police of the Jewish State, sweating and crying under the August sun – when all they want to do is pray as Jews do all around the world. And the next day, another group, and the next one, another one. If the movements can convince Jews who come to Israel during the summer to sacrifice one day and risk some inconvenience to do that, the “emergency” will become a two-way emergency.”

So, it is not yet August, and the egalitarian prayer is not yet a daily affair. In my opinion, a monthly gathering is not going to do the trick, because it plays into the Orthodox narrative by proving that the level of commitment on the part on the non-Orthodox groups is much lower than the level of commitment of the Orthodox world. But it is something. It makes this another item in the long list of complex dilemmas that make Jerusalem a political and cultural headache. An item that the government could solve – or one, just like building near Beit Safafa, that the government wants the courts to handle.