Madison Rafah Journal

If Jewish Israelis can claim property in East Jerusalem based on land deeds that predate 1948, why can’t Palestinians with similar deeds reclaim their homes in West Jerusalem?

KAI BIRD, The New York Times, May 1, 2010

AS a boy, I lived in Sheik Jarrah, a wealthy Arab neighborhood in East Jerusalem. Annexed by Israel in 1967 and now the subject of a conflict over property claims, my former home has come to symbolize everything that has gone wrong between the Israelis and Palestinians over the last six decades.

Despite talk of a slowdown in Israeli construction in East Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, Jerusalem’s mayor, toured Washington earlier this week and told officials that the expansion into Arab neighborhoods is going ahead at full speed.

As a result, “The battle line in Israel’s war of survival as a Jewish and democratic state now runs through the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem,” writes David Landau, the former editor of the Israeli daily Haaretz. “Is that the line, at last, where Israel’s decline will be halted?” I hope so.

My family lived in Israel from 1956 to 1958, when my father, an American diplomat, was stationed in East Jerusalem. We lived in the Palestinian sector, but every day I crossed through Mandelbaum Gate, the one checkpoint in the divided city, to attend school in an Israeli neighborhood. I thus had the rare privilege of seeing both sides.

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Bright Stars of Bethlehem Benefit
Friday, June 11, 2010
The Madison Club [Map]
Madison, WI

Bright Stars of Bethlehem local representatives Bonnie Van Overbeke and Nancy Baumgardner invite you to attend a benefit for the children and families of Bethlehem. Rev. Mitri Raheb, pastor of Christmas Lutheran Church and director of the Diyar Consortium, will be the guest speaker at this benefit. The Diyar Consortium includes programs for children and their families, senior citizens, a health and wellness center, and a college. For more information, go to www.brightstarsbethlehem.org.

The Benefit will be held at The Madison Club. There is a suggested $50 donation. If you are interested in attending this event, contact nancybaumgardner (at) gmail.com.

7:00 – 9:00 pm
1221 Humanities Building
455 N. Park St
UW-Madison [map]

Dr. Jad Isaac will present research on Palestinian agriculture, environment, land use and water, highlighting the problems facing farmers and residents in the occupied West Bank. His presentation will cover current and future water conditions, and options for a more sustainable water management system.

Dr. Isaac, a Palestinian resident from the Bethlehem area, is a former professor of life sciences at Bethlehem University and currently the director of the Applied Research Institute-Jerusalem (ARIJ). He headed the Palestinian delegation for the environmental working group in the multilateral talks and is an advisor to the Palestinian negotiating team on final status issues with Israel.

This event is sponsored by Hillel's Israel Celebrates 62 Committee, Kavanah: An Open Dialogue on the Israel-Palestine Conflict, The Middle East Interest Group, and the American Friends Service Committee in Chicago.

Jeffrey Heller, Reuters, 15 March 2010

JERUSALEM – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday rejected any curbs on Jewish settlement in and around Jerusalem, defying Washington in Israel's deepening crisis with U.S. President Barack Obama's administration.

"For the past 40 years, no Israeli government ever limited construction in the neighborhoods of Jerusalem," he said in a speech in parliament, citing areas in the West Bank that Israel captured in 1967 and unilaterally annexed to the city.

The United States condemned Israel's plan to build 1,600 new homes for Jews in Ramat Shlomo, a religious settlement within the Israeli-designated borders of Jerusalem, whose future status is at the heart of the Middle East conflict.

Israel's announcement of the project during a visit last week by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden embarrassed the White House. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in unusually blunt remarks, called it an insult.

The Palestinians, who had just agreed to begin indirect peace talks under U.S. mediation, have said they will not go ahead unless the plan is scrapped.

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Commemorating the life of Rachel Corrie

Sunday, March 21
4:30-5:30 pm Silent Auction viewing and bidding
5:30-6:30 pm Vegetarian Dinner by Lulu's restaurant
6:30-9:00 pm Program
Fellowship Hall, First United Methodist Church
203 Wisconsin Avenue, Madison [Map]

A benefit dinner and program sponsored by the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project and Madison Playgrounds for Palestine.

Tickets for the dinner and program are $15 for adults and $10 for children 12 and under. All proceeds will help provide Palestinian children with a new playground in Beit Sahour, West Bank through Playgrounds for Palestine, and a water purification system for a school in Rafah, Gaza through the Maia Project of the Middle East Children's Alliance (MECA).

Besides information on these two humanitarian projects, the program will mark the seventh anniversary of Rachel Corrie's death on March 16 with (Read on …)

ARON HELLER, Associated Press, March 9, 2010

JERUSALEM – Vice President Joe Biden condemned an Israeli plan to build hundreds of homes in disputed east Jerusalem on Tuesday, casting a cloud over a high-profile visit that had been aimed at repairing ties with the Jewish state and kickstarting Mideast peace talks.

Israel's Interior Ministry said late Tuesday that it had approved construction of 1,600 new apartments, an embarrassing setback for Biden after a day of warm meetings with top Israeli officials.

Although ministry officials said the announcement was procedural and unconnected to the visit, a top aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was blindsided and tried to contain the damage at a late-night dinner with Biden.

Nonetheless, Biden issued a harshly worded statement after the dinner, saying its timing was especially troubling by coming on the eve of a new round of U.S.-mediated peace talks.

"The substance and timing of the announcement, particularly with the launching of proximity talks, is precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now," Biden said.

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Israel builds still more facts on Palestinian ground, while stalemate persists

The Economist | Mar 4th 2010 | JERUSALEM

EVEN as the Americans strive to jump-start fresh talks between Israelis and Palestinians, the Israeli government has been using the hiatus to intensify the refashioning of East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians see as their future capital. This week the city’s Israeli mayor, Nir Barkat, unveiled his latest plan to turn Palestinian districts into Jewish biblical heritage parks. Fearing that their half of the city is being cast in an increasingly Israeli mould, Palestinian stone-throwers clashed with Israeli forces on the Haram al-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary, which Muslims venerate for its al-Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third-holiest shrine, and which Jews revere as the site of the biblical Temple. While George Mitchell, Barack Obama’s envoy, is yet again bidding to open “proximity talks” between the two sides, the Palestinians have been literally losing ground.

Unlike previous Israeli prime ministers, who built on the open hilltops above Arab population centres in the West Bank and on the edge of Jerusalem, Binyamin Netanyahu and his officials are concentrating on Jewish settlements bang in the midst of them. Car-parks and conservation areas, rich with Israeli symbols, are sprouting across East Jerusalem. Settlers with state protection are opening religious schools there. Scarcely a week passes without an Israeli newspaper heralding new Jewish housing units being built in Arab districts. Israeli archaeologists are scraping away the eastern parts of the city’s Arab surface in search of a Jewish past. Last month one of them declared she had “probably” found King Solomon’s city walls.

Inside the Old City itself (see map), the Israeli government’s East Jerusalem Development company has begun to interrupt the main Palestinian artery into the ancient centre, for sewage works. Mr Barkat says the project will improve services, but Palestinians fear it presages fresh archaeological digs aimed at exposing Jewish ties along the pilgrims’ route to the Temple that Jewish groups from the religious right seek to rebuild. To fulfil millennial Jewish yearning to restore the tabernacle, the company is also repairing what it says are ancient ablution pools.

Beneath the Old City’s Muslim quarter, the company says it will open its extension to 9,000 square metres of biblical quarries this summer and could yet link them to other subterranean routes, giving Israelis and tourists access from one end of the Old City to the other without having to pass an Arab or the trinket shops on which many Palestinian traders in the city depend.

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