Sunday, February 15, 2004
OH JERUSALEM
Reclaiming David's city ... a home at a time
Israeli group defends abrupt evictions
Jews replace Arabs in East Jerusalem
TORONTO STAR
"..."When the Jewish groups take a house in an Arab part of town, they come with guns, they live with guns, there are armed guards," said Margalit.
"They bring jeeps, they bring dogs. The houses become military compounds. And so the Arab residents live in fear of what might happen. They watch their tongues."
"Look at the larger picture. Put the settlement actions in Silwan together with the ongoing demolition of Arab houses in East Jerusalem. Put it together with the building of the wall through Abu Dis.
"All these features together paint a very dramatic picture where the Israeli government, together with the settlers, are part of a national program to make the life of Palestinians so hard they will leave Jerusalem. It is that simple.,,"
http://www.torontostar.ca/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1076713810484
MITCH POTTER
MIDDLE EAST BUREAU
Feb. 14, 2004. 08:27 AM
JERUSALEM Thirty hired guns on a mission nothing less than biblical bore down on the impoverished Arab East Jerusalem enclave of Silwan in a pre-dawn operation last Sunday. With stealth-like precision, they crept toward deliverance in tiptoe silence. At 2:45 a.m., one of the gunmen reached out to carefully squeeze shut a yipping puppy's jaws so as not to alarm sleeping neighbors. A second produced a cordless drill and pointed its carbide tip into the lockset of the target door.
Moments later, they were in. And a few minutes after that, the Arabs were out. Twelve people in all, members of the Ajlouni family, awakened and ousted into darkened streets from a home no longer theirs. Hostile words were exchanged, but not a drop of blood was shed. The private Israeli security team executed its mission perfectly.
In a conflict marked by daily death, events such as last weekend's eviction drive tend not to make the headlines. But make no mistake Silwan, the hotly disputed neighborhood in the historic sloping valley beneath the religiously revered southern ramparts of the Old City walls, just got a little more Jewish, a little less Palestinian. The whys and wherefores of the paramilitary operation speak volumes about how the hallowed soil of Jerusalem remains far and away the most vexing dimension of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle.
To the Palestinians turfed last Sunday, the nighttime expulsions bore all the hallmarks of what they see as a nefarious campaign to quietly make Jerusalem Jewish beyond any hope of reclamation. Every home lost, they say, is but one unnecessarily provocative step farther away from the peaceful co-existence envisioned under the collapsed Oslo peace process.
To the Israelis behind the raid the not-for-profit foundation known as Elad nothing could be further from the truth. Sunday's reclamation was not an act of illegal settlement, but rather a glorious and legally binding act of Jewish redemption aimed at the extraordinarily precious archeological site that lies beneath these white stone homes. For this, they say, is not Silwan, but Ir David the true City of David and as such, nothing less than the spiritual centre of the world.
THE RANT
Published by David Rubinson in the hope that sharing information can motivate and lead to change.
Israeli group defends abrupt evictions
Jews replace Arabs in East Jerusalem
TORONTO STAR
"..."When the Jewish groups take a house in an Arab part of town, they come with guns, they live with guns, there are armed guards," said Margalit.
"They bring jeeps, they bring dogs. The houses become military compounds. And so the Arab residents live in fear of what might happen. They watch their tongues."
"Look at the larger picture. Put the settlement actions in Silwan together with the ongoing demolition of Arab houses in East Jerusalem. Put it together with the building of the wall through Abu Dis.
"All these features together paint a very dramatic picture where the Israeli government, together with the settlers, are part of a national program to make the life of Palestinians so hard they will leave Jerusalem. It is that simple.,,"
http://www.torontostar.ca/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1076713810484
MITCH POTTER
MIDDLE EAST BUREAU
Feb. 14, 2004. 08:27 AM
JERUSALEM Thirty hired guns on a mission nothing less than biblical bore down on the impoverished Arab East Jerusalem enclave of Silwan in a pre-dawn operation last Sunday. With stealth-like precision, they crept toward deliverance in tiptoe silence. At 2:45 a.m., one of the gunmen reached out to carefully squeeze shut a yipping puppy's jaws so as not to alarm sleeping neighbors. A second produced a cordless drill and pointed its carbide tip into the lockset of the target door.
Moments later, they were in. And a few minutes after that, the Arabs were out. Twelve people in all, members of the Ajlouni family, awakened and ousted into darkened streets from a home no longer theirs. Hostile words were exchanged, but not a drop of blood was shed. The private Israeli security team executed its mission perfectly.
In a conflict marked by daily death, events such as last weekend's eviction drive tend not to make the headlines. But make no mistake Silwan, the hotly disputed neighborhood in the historic sloping valley beneath the religiously revered southern ramparts of the Old City walls, just got a little more Jewish, a little less Palestinian. The whys and wherefores of the paramilitary operation speak volumes about how the hallowed soil of Jerusalem remains far and away the most vexing dimension of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle.
To the Palestinians turfed last Sunday, the nighttime expulsions bore all the hallmarks of what they see as a nefarious campaign to quietly make Jerusalem Jewish beyond any hope of reclamation. Every home lost, they say, is but one unnecessarily provocative step farther away from the peaceful co-existence envisioned under the collapsed Oslo peace process.
To the Israelis behind the raid the not-for-profit foundation known as Elad nothing could be further from the truth. Sunday's reclamation was not an act of illegal settlement, but rather a glorious and legally binding act of Jewish redemption aimed at the extraordinarily precious archeological site that lies beneath these white stone homes. For this, they say, is not Silwan, but Ir David the true City of David and as such, nothing less than the spiritual centre of the world.
THE RANT
Published by David Rubinson in the hope that sharing information can motivate and lead to change.
