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An Arab woman walks near the apartment owned by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, background, in the Muslim Quarter in Jerusalem's Old City Saturday. (AP)
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| By Associated Press January 8, 2006 |
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More than 18 years ago, Ariel Sharon hosted a party at his new apartment in the heart of the Old City's Muslim quarter. The guests lit Hanukkah candles and toasted with Israeli wine.
Sharon rarely returned to the place on Al-Wad Street. But for Palestinians, it instantly became a hated Jewish beachhead amid their shops and homes. In recent years, the residence also came to represent the inconsistencies in Israel's attitudes toward Arab areas.
Sharon followed through with the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip last year despite fierce resistance from Jewish settlers and their supporters. But different rules have applied to the West Bank and east Jerusalem, which Palestinians claim as their capital and remains the linchpin of any credible peace plan.
Sharon said he would not dismantle the larger Jewish settlements in the West Bank, even as he moved ahead with a separation barrier that's drawn international denunciations. He also raised no objections as more Jewish groups followed his path and took deeds on property in east Jerusalem, which includes the Old City and is ringed by Jewish housing developments built since the area was taken from Jordan in the 1967 Mideast War.
Few Palestinians expect any weakening in Israel's resolve to expand Jewish influence in east Jerusalem even without Sharon in charge.
"It's like a slap in the face every time I look up and see the Israeli flag on top of Sharon's house," said Nour Hamdan, who sells scarves from an alcove a few paces to the apartment's entranceway. "It's humiliating to think that my children will probably see the same sight."
Sharon's second-floor apartment - rising above a stone arch a few minutes' walk from the Damascus Gate - is decorated with a huge menorah, an ancient symbol of Jewish worship. Armed guards watch from rooftop perches. Red paint thrown during past protests is splattered on the cream-colored facade.
"I wish we could just burn it down," said Murat Hassan, who was shopping for fruit in Saturday's busy stalls in the walled Old City. "We would start there and move through all the Jewish places (in East Jerusalem)."
The list is growing. At least a half dozen Jewish homes have been established in the Old City's Muslim quarter since Sharon - then trade minister - threw his housewarming party in December 1987. Jewish groups - sometimes bankrolled by Jewish-American backers or aided by special Israeli government loans - have acquired or developed east Jerusalem properties at an increasing rate. Since the mid-1990s, the Jewish presence in Arab neighborhoods has nearly doubled to about 1,800, according to the settlement watchdog group Ir Amim.
It's tiny compared with east Jerusalem's more than 225,000 Arabs. But the political value for Israel far exceeds the numbers.
The Palestinians consider Jerusalem the capital of a future state and Muslims worldwide rally for uncontested Palestinian control of Jerusalem's Al Aqsa Mosque, which marks the site where Islamic tradition says the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven. Israeli leaders, however, make an equally strong claim on Jerusalem.
Jerusalem holds Judaism's most holy sites, including the Western Wall, which is considered the remnants of the Second Temple destroyed by Romans in 70 AD.
An expanding Jewish presence in Arab areas is a small - but symbolically significant - backlash in Israel's birthrate battle with Palestinians, whose population is growing at a faster pace. Impoverished Palestinian property owners often cannot turn their back on market-rate offers from Jewish groups.
"The Israelis know we are growing and growing. They cannot stop that," said Hamza Bakroun, who conducts tours in the Old City. "Their only weapon is money - coming in like Sharon and getting our properties. They know it's a provocation and they don't care."
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