'All coexistence is dead, all opportunities for sharing are lost,' MICHAEL JANSENwas told in Jerusalem
TODAY’S visitors skim over the surface of the Holy City, riding high in purple buses or shepherded on foot over the cobblestones in the narrow alleyways of the walled city.
Their officious guides, eyes hidden by wrap-around shades, conduct their charges to shops and cafés, where owners pay handsome commissions, as well as to sacred shrines.
At a table in the courtyard of the Ottoman-era American Colony Hotel in East Jerusalem, my friend Edward remarks: “When I was a boy we used to let out rooms to pilgrims who came from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan . . . We all squeezed into one bedroom.
“They came for a few weeks and visited all the holy places. They brought a breath of fresh air to the place. Once they left, we white-washed the house.”
Neither Christian nor Muslim pilgrims come these days from the Arab hinterland. Either Israel does not allow them to enter or their governments do not permit them to travel to East Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Jericho, occupied by Israel in 1967. Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza can visit Jerusalem, once Palestine’s political, commercial and cultural hub, if they have Israeli permits.
Joumana says: “During Ottoman, British and even Jordanian times, pilgrims from Africa, Russia, Greece, Arab and Muslim countries came and settled down. They established themselves in certain quarters.
“They brought new customs and traditions to the city. European and American visitors bring only money and not a lot because they come on package tours.”
Half an hour’s walk away at a popular café in the Old City, Gabriel, a Palestinian who tracks Israeli policies and actions in the city, says: “The most important thing happening these days is the takeover of Jerusalem. Israel is asserting simultaneous claims in Silwan and Shaikh Jarrah. Settlers are moving into Palestinian homes and the municipality is building tourist facilities on the ruins of Palestinian homes. The character of the city is changing.
“The population is divided equally into three mutually exclusive groups: Palestinians, secular Jews and religious Jews. Each group feels threatened by the others. There is anger, tension and violence. Palestinians are being isolated, secular Jews squeezed by the Orthodox. The city’s diversity is being destroyed.
“A diplomat told me, ‘It took hundreds of years to create cosmopolitan cohabitation and respect. Once the city is homogenised, they [these achievements] will never return’.”
Gabriel paraphrases Meron Benvenisti, a former Israeli deputy mayor, who told a film crew making a documentary about the diversity of Jerusalem that there is nothing left to celebrate – “all coexistence is dead, all opportunities [for sharing] are lost”.
The Mamilla cemetery, a Muslim burial ground since the 7th century, is cited as a prime example of what is happening.
A large section has been bulldozed to clear the land for a Centre for Human Dignity and Museum of Tolerance to be built jointly by the Israeli government and the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Centre.
Already 400 graves dating to the 12th century have been unearthed; an estimated 2,000 earlier graves remain in four layers in a wasteland of smashed and overturned tombstones, where the Islamic trust tasked with its upkeep has been denied access.
Sixty members of the Husseini, Khalidi, Nusseibeh and Dajani families have petitioned the UN Human Rights Council and Unesco, arguing that the project violates Palestinian religious, cultural and human rights and calling for it to be scrapped.